t to Congress will
communicate a full statement of the condition of our finances. The
imports for the fiscal year ending on the 30th of June last were of the
value of $117,254,564, of which the amount exported was $15,346,830,
leaving a balance of $101,907,734 for domestic consumption. The exports
for the same year were of the value of $114,646,606, of which the amount
of domestic articles was $99,299,776. The receipts into the Treasury
during the same year were $29,769,133.56, of which there were derived
from customs $27,528,112.70, from sales of public lands $2,077,022.30,
and from incidental and miscellaneous sources $163,998.56. The
expenditures for the same period were $29,968,206.98, of which
$8,588,157.62 were applied to the payment of the public debt. The
balance in the Treasury on the 1st of July last was $7,658,306.22. The
amount of the public debt remaining unpaid on the 1st of October last
was $17,075,445.52. Further payments of the public debt would have been
made, in anticipation of the period of its reimbursement under the
authority conferred upon the Secretary of the Treasury by the acts of
July 21, 1841, and of April 15, 1842, and March 3, 1843, had not the
unsettled state of our relations with Mexico menaced hostile collision
with that power. In view of such a contingency it was deemed prudent to
retain in the Treasury an amount unusually large for ordinary purposes.

A few years ago our whole national debt growing out of the Revolution
and the War of 1812 with Great Britain was extinguished, and we
presented to the world the rare and noble spectacle of a great and
growing people who had fully discharged every obligation. Since that
time the existing debt has been contracted, and, small as it is in
comparison with the similar burdens of most other nations, it should be
extinguished at the earliest practicable period. Should the state of the
country permit, and especially if our foreign relations interpose no
obstacle, it is contemplated to apply all the moneys in the Treasury as
they accrue, beyond what is required for the appropriations by Congress,
to its liquidation. I cherish the hope of soon being able to
congratulate the country on its recovering once more the lofty position
which it so recently occupied. Our country, which exhibits to the world
the benefits of self-government, in developing all the sources of
national prosperity owes to mankind the permanent example of a nation
free from the bli