, the ensign at
each naval station and of each of the vessels of the United States Navy
in commission be hoisted at half-mast from sunrise to sunset, and that
also, at each naval station and on board of flagships and vessels acting
singly, a gun be fired at intervals of every half hour from sunrise to
sunset.

The officers of the Navy and Marine Corps will wear the usual badge of
mourning attached to the sword hilt and on the left arm for a period of
thirty days.

WILLIAM C. WHITNEY,
_Secretary of the Navy_.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _Washington, November 20, 1886_.

_It is hereby ordered_, That the Department of Agriculture, the
Government Printing Office, and all other Government offices in the
District of Columbia be closed on Monday, the 22d instant, the day of
the funeral of the late Chester Alan Arthur, ex-President of the United
States.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON, _December 6, 1886_.

_To the Congress of the United States_:

In discharge of a constitutional duty, and following a well-established
precedent in the Executive office, I herewith transmit to the Congress
at its reassembling certain information concerning the state of the
Union, together with such recommendations for legislative consideration
as appear necessary and expedient.

Our Government has consistently maintained its relations of friendship
toward all other powers and of neighborly interest toward those whose
possessions are contiguous to our own. Few questions have arisen during
the past year with other governments, and none of those are beyond the
reach of settlement in friendly counsel.

We are as yet without provision for the settlement of claims of citizens
of the United States against Chile for injustice during the late war
with Peru and Bolivia. The mixed commissions organized under claims
conventions concluded by the Chilean Government with certain European
States have developed an amount of friction which we trust can be
avoided in the convention which our representative at Santiago is
authorized to negotiate.

The cruel treatment of inoffensive Chinese has, I regret to say, been
repeated in some of the far Western States and Territories, and acts of
violence against those people, beyond the power of the local constituted
authorities to prevent and difficult to punish, are reported even in
distant Alaska. Much of this violence can be traced to race prejudice
and competition of labor,