staining the Government in all its operations and disbursements,
since the 4th of March, 1817, $157,199,380.96, the accounts for which
have been settled to the amount of $137,501,451.12, leaving a balance
unsettled of $19,697,929.84. For precise details respecting each of
these balances I refer to the report of the Comptroller and the
documents which accompany it.

From this view it appears that our commercial differences with France
and Great Britain have been placed in a train of amicable arrangement on
conditions fair and honorable in both instances to each party; that our
finances are in a very productive state, our revenue being at present
fully competent to all the demands upon it; that our military force is
well organized in all its branches and capable of rendering the most
important service in case of emergency that its number will admit of;
that due progress has been made, under existing appropriations, in the
construction of fortifications and in the operations of the Ordnance
Department; that due progress has in like manner been made in the
construction of ships of war; that our Navy is in the best condition,
felt and respected in every sea in which it is employed for the
protection of our commerce; that our manufactures have augmented in
amount and improved in quality; that great progress has been made in
the settlement of accounts and in the recovery of the balances due by
individuals, and that the utmost economy is secured and observed in
every Department of the Administration.

Other objects will likewise claim your attention, because from the
station which the United States hold as a member of the great community
of nations they have rights to maintain, duties to perform, and dangers
to encounter.

A strong hope was entertained that peace would ere this have been
concluded between Spain and the independent governments south of the
United States in this hemisphere. Long experience having evinced the
competency of those governments to maintain the independence which they
had declared, it was presumed that the considerations which induced
their recognition by the United States would have had equal weight with
other powers, and that Spain herself, yielding to those magnanimous
feelings of which her history furnishes so many examples, would have
terminated on that basis a controversy so unavailing and at the same
time so destructive. We still cherish the hope that this result will
not long be postponed.