shall test their utility, until all our important harbors,
by these and auxiliary means, shall be secured against insult and
opposition to the laws.

No circumstance has arisen since your last session which calls for any
augmentation of our regular military force. Should any improvement occur
in the militia system, that will be always seasonable.

Accounts of the receipts and expenditures of the last year, with
estimates for the ensuing one, will as usual be laid before you.

The state of our finances continues to fulfill our expectations. Eleven
millions and a half of dollars, received in the course of the year
ending the 30th of September last, have enabled us, after meeting all
the ordinary expenses of the year, to pay upward of $3,600,000 of the
public debt, exclusive of interest. This payment, with those of the
two preceding years, has extinguished upward of twelve millions of the
principal and a greater sum of interest within that period, and by a
proportionate diminution of interest renders already sensible the effect
of the growing sum yearly applicable to the discharge of the principal.

It is also ascertained that the revenue accrued during the last year
exceeds that of the preceding, and the probable receipts of the ensuing
year may safely be relied on as sufficient, with the sum already in the
Treasury, to meet all the current demands of the year, to discharge
upward of three millions and a half of the engagements incurred under
the British and French conventions, and to advance in the further
redemption of the funded debt as rapidly as had been contemplated.
These, fellow-citizens, are the principal matters which I have thought
it necessary at this time to communicate for your consideration and
attention. Some others will be laid before you in the course of the
session; but in the discharge of the great duties confided to you by
our country you will take a broader view of the field of legislation.
Whether the great interests of agriculture, manufactures, commerce, or
navigation can within the pale of your constitutional powers be aided
in any of their relations; whether laws are provided in all cases where
they are wanting; whether those provided are exactly what they should
be; whether any abuses take place in their administration, or in that of
the public revenues; whether the organization of the public agents or of
the public force is perfect in all its parts; in fine, whether anything
can be done to