l be annually about five
millions of the sinking fund unexpended until the year 1825, when the
loan of 1812 and the stock created by funding Treasury notes will be
redeemable.

It is also estimated that the Mississippi stock will be discharged
during the year 1819 from the proceeds of the public lands assigned to
that object, after which the receipts from those lands will annually
add to the public revenue the sum of one million and a half, making the
permanent annual revenue amount to $26,000,000, and leaving an annual
excess of revenue after the year 1819 beyond the permanent authorized
expenditure of more than $4,000,000.

By the last returns to the Department of War the militia force of the
several States may be estimated at 800,000 men--infantry, artillery, and
cavalry. Great part of this force is armed, and measures are taken to
arm the whole. An improvement in the organization and discipline of
the militia is one of the great objects which claims the unremitted
attention of Congress.

The regular force amounts nearly to the number required by law, and is
stationed along the Atlantic and inland frontiers.

Of the naval force it has been necessary to maintain strong squadrons in
the Mediterranean and in the Gulf of Mexico.

From several of the Indian tribes inhabiting the country bordering on
Lake Erie purchases have been made of lands on conditions very favorable
to the United States, and, as it is presumed, not less so to the tribes
themselves.

By these purchases the Indian title, with moderate reservations, has
been extinguished to the whole of the land within the limits of the
State of Ohio, and to a part of that in the Michigan Territory and of
the State of Indiana. From the Cherokee tribe a tract has been purchased
in the State of Georgia and an arrangement made by which, in exchange
for lands beyond the Mississippi, a great part, if not the whole, of the
land belonging to that tribe eastward of that river in the States of
North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, and in the Alabama Territory
will soon be acquired. By these acquisitions, and others that may
reasonably be expected soon to follow, we shall be enabled to extend our
settlements from the inhabited parts of the State of Ohio along Lake
Erie into the Michigan Territory, and to connect our settlements by
degrees through the State of Indiana and the Illinois Territory to
that of Missouri. A similar and equally advantageous effect will soon
be p