In thus employing my best faculties to exercise the power with which I am invested to avoid evils and to effect the greatest attainable good for our common country I feel that I may trust to your cordial cooperation.

I avail myself of this early opportunity to return to the Senate, in which it originated, the bill entitled 'An act providing for the final settlement of the claims of States for interest on advances to the United States made during the…

I shall continue to apply my best exertions to their application and enforcement.

I have been compelled to withhold from it my signature, and it has therefore failed to become a law.

With these reasons and considerations I return the bill to the Senate.

Had there been incorporated in the bill no provisions for works of a different description, depending on principles which extend the power of making appropriations to every object which the discretion of the Government may select, and…

It is obvious that such appropriations involve the sanction of a principle that concedes to the General Government an unlimited power over the subject of internal improvements.

It gives me pleasure to congratulate you upon your return to the seat of Government for the purpose of discharging your duties to the people of the United States.

If those which are clearly granted shall be found incompetent to the ends of its creation, it can at any time apply for their enlargement; and there is no probability that such an application, if founded on the public interest, will ever…

This campaign has evinced the efficient organization of the Army and its capacity for prompt and active service.

Although the pestilence which had traversed the Old World has entered our limits and extended its ravages over much of our land, it has pleased Almighty God to mitigate its severity and lessen the number of its victims compared with those…

Our best wishes on all occasions, our good offices when required, will be afforded to promote the domestic tranquillity and foreign peace of all nations with whom we have any intercourse.

The relations of our country continue to present the same picture of amicable intercourse that I had the satisfaction to hold up to your view at the opening of your last session.

From Great Britain I have the satisfaction to inform you that I continue to receive assurances of the most amicable disposition, which have on my part on all proper occasions been promptly and sincerely reciprocated.

I can not too cordially congratulate Congress and my fellow citizens on the near approach of that memorable and happy event – the extinction of the public debt of this great and free nation.

I have now done my duty to my country.

I sincerely regret that in the act before me I can perceive none of those modifications of the bank charter which are necessary, in my opinion, to make it compatible with justice, with sound policy, or with the Constitution of our country.

Under these circumstances, and possessing myself a personal knowledge of his integrity and fitness and of the claims which his faithful and patriotic services give him upon the Government, I deem it an act of justice to nominate him again.