n favor of a
public officer who continues to defraud the Treasury and conceal the
transaction for the brief term of two years. I would therefore recommend
such an alteration of the law as will give the injured party and the
Government two years after the disclosure of the fraud or after the
accused is out of office to commence their prosecution.

In connection with this subject I invite the attention of Congress to a
general and minute inquiry into the condition of the Government, with a
view to ascertain what offices can be dispensed with, what expenses
retrenched, and what improvements may be made in the organization of its
various parts to secure the proper responsibility of public agents and
promote efficiency and justice in all its operations.

The report of the Secretary of War will make you acquainted with the
condition of our Army, fortifications, arsenals, and Indian affairs. The
proper discipline of the Army, the training and equipment of the
militia, the education bestowed at West Point, and the accumulation of
the means of defense applicable to the naval force will tend to prolong
the peace we now enjoy, and which every good citizen, more especially
those who have felt the miseries of even a successful warfare, must
ardently desire to perpetuate.

The returns from the subordinate branches of this service exhibit a
regularity and order highly creditable to its character. Both officers
and soldiers seem imbued with a proper sense of duty, and conform to the
restraints of exact discipline with that cheerfulness which becomes the
profession of arms. There is need, however, of further legislation to
obviate the inconveniences specified in the report under consideration,
to some of which it is proper that I should call your particular
attention.

The act of Congress of the 2d March, 1821, to reduce and fix the
military establishment, remaining unexecuted as it regards the command
of one of the regiments of artillery, can not now be deemed a guide to
the Executive in making the proper appointment. An explanatory act,
designating the class of officers out of which this grade is to be
filled--whether from the military list as existing prior to the act of
1821 or from it as it has been fixed by that act--would remove this
difficulty. It is also important that the laws regulating the pay and
emoluments of officers generally should be more specific than they now
are. Those, for example, in relation to the Paymaster