om such vast
domains, and which under other systems might have a repulsive tendency,
can not fail to produce with us under wise regulations the opposite
effect. What one portion wants the other may supply; and this will be
most sensibly felt by the parts most distant from each other, forming
thereby a domestic market and an active intercourse between the extremes
and throughout every portion of our Union. Thus by a happy distribution
of power between the National and State Governments, Governments which
rest exclusively on the sovereignty of the people and are fully adequate
to the great purposes for which they were respectively instituted,
causes which might otherwise lead to dismemberment operate powerfully
to draw us closer together. In every other circumstance a correct view
of the actual state of our Union must be equally gratifying to our
constituents. Our relations with foreign powers are of a friendly
character, although certain interesting differences remain unsettled
with some. Our revenue under the mild system of impost and tonnage
continues to be adequate to all the purposes of the Government Our
agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and navigation flourish. Our
fortifications are advancing in the degree authorized by existing
appropriations to maturity, and due progress is made in the augmentation
of the Navy to the limit prescribed for it by law. For these blessings
we owe to Almighty God, from whom we derive them, and with profound
reverence, our most grateful and unceasing acknowledgments.

In adverting to our relations with foreign powers, which are always
an object of the highest importance, I have to remark that of the
subjects which have been brought into discussion with them during the
present Administration some have been satisfactorily terminated, others
have been suspended, to be resumed hereafter under circumstances more
favorable to success, and others are still in negotiation, with the hope
that they may be adjusted with mutual accommodation to the interests
and to the satisfaction of the respective parties. It has been the
invariable object of this Government to cherish the most friendly
relations with every power, and on principles and conditions which might
make them permanent. A systematic effort has been made to place our
commerce with each power on a footing of perfect reciprocity, to settle
with each in a spirit of candor and liberality all existing differences,
and to anticipate and rem