lonies
negotiate with other nations and grant them freely admission to the
colonies by treaty, and so far are the other colonizing nations of
Europe now from refusing to negotiate for trade with their colonies that
we ourselves have secured access to the colonies of more than one of
them by treaty. The refusal, however, of Great Britain to negotiate
leaves to the United States no other alternative than that of regulating
or interdicting altogether the trade on their part, according as either
measure may affect the interests of our own country, and with that
exclusive object I would recommend the whole subject to your calm and
candid deliberations.

It is hoped that our unavailing exertions to accomplish a cordial good
understanding on this interest will not have an unpropitious effect
upon the other great topics of discussion between the two Governments.
Our northeastern and northwestern boundaries are still unadjusted. The
commissioners under the seventh article of the treaty of Ghent have
nearly come to the close of their labors; nor can we renounce the
expectation, enfeebled as it is, that they may agree upon their report
to the satisfaction or acquiescence of both parties. The commission for
liquidating the claims for indemnity for slaves carried away after the
close of the war has been sitting, with doubtful prospects of success.
Propositions of compromise have, however, passed between the two
Governments, the result of which we flatter ourselves may yet prove
satisfactory. Our own dispositions and purposes toward Great Britain are
all friendly and conciliatory; nor can we abandon but with strong
reluctance the belief that they will ultimately meet a return, not of
favors, which we neither ask nor desire, but of equal reciprocity and
good will.

With the American Governments of this hemisphere we continue to maintain
an intercourse altogether friendly, and between their nations and ours
that commercial interchange of which mutual benefit is the source and
mutual comfort and harmony the result is in a continual state of
improvement. The war between Spain and them since the total expulsion of
the Spanish military force from their continental territories has been
little more than nominal, and their internal tranquillity, though
occasionally menaced by the agitations which civil wars never fail to
leave behind them, has not been affected by any serious calamity.

The congress of ministers from several of those natio