rty conflicts of the day are necessarily injurious, and
should be discountenanced. Our action upon them should be under the
control of higher and purer motives. Legislation subjected to such
influences can never be just, and will not long retain the sanction of a
people whose active patriotism is not bounded by sectional limits nor
insensible to that spirit of concession and forbearance which gave life
to our political compact and still sustains it. Discarding all
calculations of political ascendency, the North, the South, the East,
and the West should unite in diminishing any burthen of which either may
justly complain.

The agricultural interest of our country is so essentially connected
with every other and so superior in importance to them all that it is
scarcely necessary to invite to it your particular attention. It is
principally as manufactures and commerce tend to increase the value of
agricultural productions and to extend their application to the wants
and comforts of society that they deserve the fostering care of
Government.

Looking forward to the period, not far distant, when a sinking fund will
no longer be required, the duties on those articles of importation which
can not come in competition with our own productions are the first that
should engage the attention of Congress in the modification of the
tariff. Of these, tea and coffee are the most prominent. They enter
largely into the consumption of the country, and have become articles of
necessity to all classes. A reduction, therefore, of the existing duties
will be felt as a common benefit, but like all other legislation
connected with commerce, to be efficacious and not injurious it should
be gradual and certain.

The public prosperity is evinced in the increased revenue arising from
the sales of the public lands and in the steady maintenance of that
produced by imposts and tonnage, notwithstanding the additional duties
imposed by the act of 19th May, 1828, and the unusual importations in
the early part of that year.

The balance in the Treasury on January 1, 1829, was $5,972,435.81. The
receipts of the current year are estimated at $24,602,230 and the
expenditures for the same time at $26,164,595, leaving a balance in the
Treasury on the 1st of January next of $4,410,070.81.

There will have been paid on account of the public debt during the
present year the sum of $12,405,005.80, reducing the whole debt of the
Government on the 1st of Janua