This vast debt, if permitted to become permanent and increasing, must eventually be gathered into the hands of a few, and enable them to exert a dangerous and controlling power in the affairs of the Government.

The borrowers would become servants to the lenders, the lenders the masters of the people.

It is our sacred duty to transmit unimpaired to our posterity the blessings of liberty which were bequeathed to us by the founders of the Republic. and by our example teach those who are to follow us carefully to avoid the dangers which…

Our national credit should be sacredly observed, but in making provision for our creditors we should not forget what is due to the masses of the people.

If provision be made for the payment of the indebtedness of the Government in the manner suggested, our nation will rapidly recover its wonted prosperity.

Our commerce, which at one time successfully rivaled that of the great maritime powers, has rapidly diminished, and our industrial interests are in a depressed and languishing condition.

The development of our inexhaustible resources is checked, and the fertile fields of the South are becoming waste for want of means to till them.

Our people need encouragement in their efforts to recover from the effects of the rebellion and of injudicious legislation, and it should be the aim of the Government to stimulate them by the prospect of an early release from the burdens…

If we can not take the burdens from their shoulders, we should at least manifest a willingness to help to bear them.

I cordially sanction the stipulations which provide for reserving lands for the various tribes, where they may be encouraged to abandon their nomadic habits and engage in agricultural and industrial pursuits.

This policy, inaugurated many years since, has met with signal success whenever it has been pursued in good faith and with becoming liberality by the United States.

Whilst we furnish subsistence and instruction to the Indians and guarantee the undisturbed enjoyment of their treaty rights, we should habitually insist upon the faithful observance of their agreement to remain within their respective…

This is the only mode by which collisions with other tribes and with the whites can be avoided and the safety of our frontier settlements secured.

The question of the right to give asylum is one always difficult and often productive of great embarrassment.

Our relations during the past year with Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile have become especially friendly and cordial.

In this connection I submit an appeal which has been made by the Swiss Republic, whose Government and institutions are kindred to our own, in behalf of its inhabitants, who are suffering extreme destitution, produced by recent devastating…

Costa Rica, with the earnestness of a sincerely friendly neighbor, solicits a reciprocity of trade, which I commend to the consideration of Congress.

The heretofore-recognized Government of the United States of Venezuela has been subverted.

Comprehensive national policy would seem to sanction the acquisition and incorporation into our Federal Union of the several adjacent continental and insular communities as speedily as it can be done peacefully, lawfully, and without any…

Each one of them, when firmly established as an independent republic, or when incorporated into the United States, would be a new source of strength and power.

The necessity, however, of repressing such unlawful movements clearly indicates the duty which rests upon us of adapting our legislative action to the new circumstances of a decline of European monarchical power and influence and the…

For an election of President and Vice-President by a direct vote of the people, instead of through the agency of electors, and making them ineligible for reelection to a second term.

Profoundly impressed with the propriety of making these important modifications in the Constitution, I respectfully submit them for the early and mature consideration of Congress.

We should, as far as possible, remove all pretext for violations of the organic law, by remedying such imperfections as time and experience may develop, ever remembering that "the constitution which at any time exists until changed by an…