specie to liquidate our foreign debt during the past
fiscal year have been $24,263,979 over the amount of specie imported.
The exports of specie during the first quarter of the present fiscal
year have been $14,651,827. Should specie continue to be exported at
this rate for the remaining three quarters of this year, it will drain
from our metallic currency during the year ending 30th June, 1852, the
enormous amount of $58,607,308.

In the present prosperous condition of the national finances it will
become the duty of Congress to consider the best mode of paying off the
public debt. If the present and anticipated surplus in the Treasury
should not be absorbed by appropriations of an extraordinary character,
this surplus should be employed in such way and under such restrictions
as Congress may enact in extinguishing the outstanding debt of the
nation.

By reference to the act of Congress approved 9th September, 1850, it
will be seen that, in consideration of certain concessions by the State
of Texas, it is provided that--

The United States shall pay to the State of Texas the sum of $10,000,000
in a stock bearing 5 per cent interest and redeemable at the end of
fourteen years, the interest payable half-yearly at the Treasury of
the United States.

In the same section of the law it is further provided--

That no more than five millions of said stock shall be issued until the
creditors of the State holding bonds and other certificates of stock of
Texas, _for which duties on imports were specially_ pledged, shall first
file at the Treasury of the United States releases of all claims against
the United States for or on account of said bonds or certificates, in
such form as shall be prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury and
approved by the President of the United States.

The form of release thus provided for has been prescribed by the
Secretary of the Treasury and approved. It has been published in all
the leading newspapers in the commercial cities of the United States,
and all persons holding claims of the kind specified in the foregoing
proviso were required to file their releases (in the form thus
prescribed) in the Treasury of the United States on or before the 1st
day of October, 1851. Although this publication has been continued
from the 25th day of March, 1851, yet up to the 1st of October last
comparatively few releases had been filed by the creditors of Texas.

The authorities o