nsidered an object of high importance to continue
these cruises until the practice is entirely suppressed. Like success
has attended our efforts to suppress the slave trade. Under the flag
of the United States and the sanction of their papers the trade may
be considered as entirely suppressed, and if any of our citizens are
engaged in it under the flags and papers of other powers, it is only
from a respect to the rights of those powers that these offenders are
not seized and brought home to receive the punishment which the laws
inflict. If every other power should adopt the same policy and pursue
the same vigorous means for carrying it into effect, the trade could
no longer exist.

Deeply impressed with the blessings which we enjoy, and of which we have
such manifold proofs, my mind is irresistibly drawn to that Almighty
Being, the great source from whence they proceed and to whom our most
grateful acknowledgments are due.

JAMES MONROE.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

WASHINGTON, _December 16, 1821_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I transmit to Congress a letter from the Secretary of the Treasury,
inclosing the report of the commissioners appointed in conformity with
the provisions of "An act to authorize the building of light-houses
therein mentioned, and for other purposes," approved the 3d of March,
1821.

JAMES MONROE.

WASHINGTON, _December 16, 1821_.

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

By a resolution of Congress approved on the 27th of March, 1818, it was
directed that the journal, acts, and proceedings of the Convention
which formed the present Constitution of the United States should be
published, under the direction of the President of the United States,
together with the secret journals of the acts and proceedings, and the
foreign correspondence (with a certain exception), of the Congress of
the United States from the first meeting thereof down to the date of the
ratification of the definitive treaty of peace between Great Britain
and the United States, in the year 1783, and that 1,000 copies thereof
should be printed, of which one copy should be furnished to each member
of that (the Fifteenth) Congress, and the residue should remain subject
to the future disposition of Congress.

And by a resolution of Congress approved on the 21st April, 1820, it
was provided that the secret journal, together with all the papers
and documents connec