ectfully,
ANDREW JACKSON.

(The same order was addressed to the Secretary of the Navy.)

THIRD ANNUAL MESSAGE.

_December 6, 1831_.
_Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives_:

The representation of the people has been renewed for the twenty-second
time since the Constitution they formed has been in force. For near half
a century the Chief Magistrates who have been successively chosen have
made their annual communications of the state of the nation to its
representatives. Generally these communications have been of the most
gratifying nature, testifying an advance in all the improvements of
social and all the securities of political life. But frequently and
justly as you have been called on to be grateful for the bounties of
Providence, at few periods have they been more abundantly or extensively
bestowed than at the present; rarely, if ever, have we had greater
reason to congratulate each other on the continued and increasing
prosperity of our beloved country.

Agriculture, the first and most important occupation of man, has
compensated the labors of the husbandman with plentiful crops of all the
varied products of our extensive country. Manufactures have been
established in which the funds of the capitalist find a profitable
investment, and which give employment and subsistence to a numerous and
increasing body of industrious and dexterous mechanics. The laborer is
rewarded by high wages in the construction of works of internal
improvement, which are extending with unprecedented rapidity. Science is
steadily penetrating the recesses of nature and disclosing her secrets,
while the ingenuity of free minds is subjecting the elements to the
power of man and making each new conquest auxiliary to his comfort. By
our mails, whose speed is regularly increased and whose routes are every
year extended, the communication of public intelligence and private
business is rendered frequent and safe; the intercourse between distant
cities, which it formerly required weeks to accomplish, is now effected
in a few days; and in the construction of railroads and the application
of steam power we have a reasonable prospect that the extreme parts of
our country will be so much approximated and those most isolated by the
obstacles of nature rendered so accessible as to remove an apprehension
sometimes entertained that the great extent of the Union would endanger
its permanent existence.

If from the satisfactor