y be practicable; the
second, to diminish its calamities when it may be inevitable. Hence the
subject of defense becomes intimately connected in all its parts in war
and in peace, for the land and at sea. No government will be disposed in
its wars with other powers to violate our rights if it knows we have the
means, are prepared and resolved to defend them. The motive will also be
diminished if it knows that our defenses by land are so well planned and
executed that an invasion of our coast can not be productive of the
evils to which we have heretofore been exposed.

It was under a thorough conviction of these truths, derived from the
admonitions of the late war, that Congress, as early as the year 1816,
during the term of my enlightened and virtuous predecessor, under whom
the war had been declared, prosecuted, and terminated, digested and made
provision for the defense of our country and support of its rights,
in peace as well as in war, by acts which authorized and enjoined the
augmentation of our Navy to a prescribed limit, and the construction
of suitable fortifications throughout the whole extent of our maritime
frontier and wherever else they might be deemed necessary. It is to the
execution of these works, both land and naval, and under a thorough
conviction that by hastening their completion I should render the best
service to my country and give the most effectual support to our free
republican system of government that my humble faculties would admit of,
that I have devoted so much of my time and labor to this great system of
national policy since I came into this office, and shall continue to do
it until my retirement from it at the end of your next session.

The Navy is the arm from which our Government will always derive most
aid in support of our neutral rights. Every power engaged in war will
know the strength of our naval force, the number of our ships of each
class, their condition, and the promptitude with which we may bring them
into service, and will pay due consideration to that argument. Justice
will always have great weight in the cabinets of Europe; but in long and
destructive wars exigencies often occur which press so vitally on them
that unless the argument of force is brought to its aid it will be
disregarded. Our land forces will always perform their duty in the event
of war, but they must perform it on the land. Our Navy is the arm which
must be principally relied on for the annoyance of t