These payments, with those which had been made in 3 years and a half preceding, have extinguished of the funded debt nearly $18M of principal.

We must join in the unprofitable contest of trying which party can do the other the most harm.

The burthen of quarantines is felt at home as well as abroad; their efficacy merits examination.

An immediate prohibition of the exportation of arms and ammunition is also submitted to your determination.

On this first occasion of addressing Congress since, by the choice of my constituents, I have entered on a second term of administration, I embrace the opportunity to give this public assurance that I will exert my best endeavors to administer faithfully the executive department.

In the course of your session you shall receive all the aid which I can give for the dispatch of public business, and all the information necessary for your deliberations, of which the interests of our own country and the confidence reposed in us by others will admit a communication.

In taking a view of the state of our country we in the first place notice the late affliction of two of our cities under the fatal fever which in latter times has occasionally visited our shores.

Although the health laws of the States should be found to need no present revisal by Congress, yet commerce claims that their attention be ever awake to them.

I know that the acquisition of Louisiana had been disapproved by some from a candid apprehension that the enlargement of our territory would endanger its union.

I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it, but have left them, as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of the church or state authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies.

The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes.

We have therefore liberally furnished them with the implements of husbandry and household use.

In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the General Government.

My conscience tells me I have on every occasion acted up to that declaration according to its obvious import and to the understanding of every candid mind.

I shall now enter on the duties to which my fellow-citizens have again called me, and shall proceed in the spirit of those principles which they have approved.

In all events, it will replace the advances we shall have made.

We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.

What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States?