the attention of
Congress for the views presented in relation to the inequality between
the Army and Navy as to the pay of officers. No such inequality should
prevail between these brave defenders of their country, and where it
does exist it is submitted to Congress whether it ought not to be
rectified.

The report of the Postmaster General is referred to as exhibiting a
highly satisfactory administration of that Department. Abuses have been
reformed, increased expedition in the transportation of the mail
secured, and its revenue much improved. In a political point of view
this Department is chiefly important as affording the means of diffusing
knowledge. It is to the body politic what the veins and arteries are to
the natural--conveying rapidly and regularly to the remotest parts of
the system correct information of the operations of the Government, and
bringing back to it the wishes and feelings of the people. Through its
agency we have secured to ourselves the full enjoyment of the blessings
of a free press.

In this general survey of our affairs a subject of high importance
presents itself in the present organization of the judiciary. An uniform
operation of the Federal Government in the different States is certainly
desirable, and existing as they do in the Union on the basis of perfect
equality, each State has a right to expect that the benefits conferred
on the citizens of others should be extended to hers. The judicial
system of the United States exists in all its efficiency in only fifteen
members of the Union; to three others the circuit courts, which
constitute an important part of that system, have been imperfectly
extended, and to the remaining six altogether denied. The effect has
been to withhold from the inhabitants of the latter the advantages
afforded (by the Supreme Court) to their fellow-citizens in other States
in the whole extent of the criminal and much of the civil authority of
the Federal judiciary. That this state of things ought to be remedied,
if it can be done consistently with the public welfare, is not to be
doubted. Neither is it to be disguised that the organization of our
judicial system is at once a difficult and delicate task. To extend the
circuit courts equally throughout the different parts of the Union, and
at the same time to avoid such a multiplication of members as would
encumber the supreme appellate tribunal, is the object desired. Perhaps
it might be accomplished by dividi