To prevent altogether the entrance of large vessels, a line of blocks across the harbor has been contemplated.

The care of human life and happiness, not their destruction, is the legitimate responsibility of good government.

It can not but be encouraging to those whom the nation has placed in the direction of their affairs to see that their fellow-citizens will press forward in support of their country in proportion as it is threatened by the disorganizing conflicts of the other hemisphere.

I suppose it will be the interest of the United States to encourage the wandering tribes of that country to reduce themselves to fixed habitations whenever they are so disposed.

Certain matters touching the public good requiring that the Senate should be convened on Saturday, the 4th day of March next, you are desired to attend at the Senate Chamber, in the city of Washington, on that day, then and there to deliberate on such communications as shall be made to you.

The establishment of towns and growing attachments to them will furnish in some degree pledges of their peaceable and friendly conduct.

According to the request expressed by the Senate in their resolution of November 14, I now transmit a report of the Secretary of the Treasury and statement showing, as far as returns have been received from the collectors, the number of vessels which have departed from the United States with permission, and specifying the other particulars contemplated by that resolution.

According to the request of the Senate in their resolution of November 14, that copies should be laid before them of all the orders and decrees of the belligerent powers of Europe, passed since 1791, affecting the commercial rights of the United States, I now transmit them a report of the Secretary of State of such of them as have been attainable in the Department of State and are supposed to have entered into the views of the Senate.

I now transmit to both Houses of Congress a report of the commissioners appointed under the act of March 29, 1806, concerning a road from Cumberland to Ohio, being a statement of the proceedings under the said act since their last report communicated to Congress, in order that Congress may be enabled to adopt such further measures as may be proper under existing circumstances.

On mature consideration and advice I approved of the proceeding of the governor.

Of the gun boats authorized by the act of December last, it has been thought necessary to build only 103 in the present year.

Under a continuance of the belligerent measures which, in defiance of laws which consecrate the rights of neutrals, overspread the ocean with danger, it will rest with the wisdom of Congress to decide on the course best adapted to such a state of things.

This candid and liberal experiment having thus failed, and no other event having occurred on which a suspension of the embargo by the Executive was authorized, it necessarily remains in the extent originally given to it.

The favorable reception of the proposition to Great Britain was the less to be doubted, as her orders of council had not only been referred for their vindication to an acquiescence on the part of the United States no longer to be pretended, but as the arrangement proposed, whilst it resisted the illegal decrees of France, involved, moreover, substantially the precise advantages professedly aimed at by the British orders.

With the Barbary Powers we continue in harmony, with the exception of an unjustifiable proceeding of the Dey of Algiers toward our consul to that Regency.

The documents containing the correspondences on the subject of the foreign edicts against our commerce, with the instructions given to our ministers at London and Paris, are now laid before you.

That no means might be omitted to produce this salutary effect, I lost no time in availing myself of the act authorizing a suspension, in whole or in part, of the several embargo laws.

It would have been a source, fellow citizens, of much gratification if our last communications from Europe had enabled me to inform you that the belligerent nations, whose disregard of neutral rights has been so destructive to our commerce, had become awakened to the duty and true policy of revoking their unrighteous edicts.