recommend to your serious consideration those objects
which by the Constitution are placed particularly within your
sphere--the national debts and taxes.

Since the decay of the feudal system, by which the public defense was
provided for chiefly at the expense of individuals, the system of loans
has been introduced, and as no nation can raise within the year by taxes
sufficient sums for its defense and military operations in time of war,
the sums loaned and debts contracted have necessarily become the
subjects of what have been called funding systems. The consequences
arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other
countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in
our own. The national defense must be provided for as well as the
support of Government; but both should be accomplished as much as
possible by immediate taxes, and as little as possible by loans.

The estimates for the service of the ensuing year will by my direction
be laid before you.

_Gentlemen of the Senate and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives_:

We are met together at a most interesting period. The situations of the
principal powers of Europe are singular and portentous. Connected with
some by treaties and with all by commerce, no important event there can
be indifferent to us. Such circumstances call with peculiar importunity
not less for a disposition to unite in all those measures on which the
honor, safety, and prosperity of our country depend than for all the
exertions of wisdom and firmness.

In all such measures you may rely on my zealous and hearty concurrence.

JOHN ADAMS.

ADDRESS OF THE SENATE TO JOHN ADAMS, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

SIR: The communications you thought proper to make in your speech to
both Houses of Congress on the opening of their present session afford
additional proofs of the attention, integrity, and firmness which have
always marked your official character.

We can not but approve of the measures you had taken to ascertain
the state and decline of the contagious sickness which has so lately
afflicted the city of Philadelphia, and the pleasing circumstance that
Congress is now assembled at that place without hazard to the health
of its members evinces the propriety of your having postponed a
determination to convene the National Legislature at another place. We
shall take into consideration the law of 1794 on this