A convention has been entered into between the United States and the Cherokee Nation for the extinguishment of the rights of the latter, and of some unsettled claims in the country north of the river Tennessee, therein described.

This convention is now laid before the Senate for their advice and consent as to its ratification.

It is sent separately and confidentially because its publication may discourage frank communications between our ministers generally and the Governments with which they reside, and especially between the same ministers.

He has therefore been instructed to urge this subject anew, to bring it more fully to the bar of reason, and to insist on rights too evident and too important to be surrendered.

On the impressment of our seamen our remonstrances have never been intermitted.

The rights of a neutral to carry on commercial intercourse with every part of the dominions of a belligerent permitted by the laws of the country (with the exception of blockaded ports and contraband of war) was believed to have been decided between Great Britain and the United States by the sentence of their commissioners mutually appointed to decide on that and other questions of difference between the two nations, and by the actual payment of the damages awarded by them against Great Britain for the infractions of that right.

The balance of remains in the Treasury.

Of that sum $1,987.50 have been necessarily applied to the support of the Territorial governments of Michigan and Louisiana until an opportunity could occur of making a specific appropriation for that purpose.

I now render to Congress an account of the grant of $20,000 for the contingent charges of Government.

Our expectation was that an intercourse should be kept up between the ex-Bashaw and the commodore.

We considered that concerted operations by those who have a common enemy were entirely justifiable.

Being mostly originals or sole copies, a return of them is requested at the convenience of the Senate.

A nation by establishing a character of liberality and magnanimity gains in the friendship and respect of others more than the worth of mere money.

In all these cases the purity and patriotism of the motives should shield the agent from blame, and even secure a sanction where the error is not too injurious.

We have no letter from Mr. Lear respecting Tripoline affairs of later date than that of July 5, which was transmitted to the Senate with the treaty.

I now communicate to the House of Representatives all the information which the executive offices furnish on the subject of their resolution of the 23d instant respecting the States indebted to the United States.

The governor and presiding judge of the Territory of Michigan have made a report to me of the state of that Territory, several matters in which being within the reach of the legislative authority only, I lay the report before Congress.

If from this sum we deduct the reasonable value of the road ceded through the whole length of their country from Ocmulgee toward New Orleans, a road of indispensable necessity to us, the present convention will be found to give little more than the half of the sum which was formerly proposed to be given.