ire to enter into
commercial intercourse with us. A state of our progress in exploring the
principal rivers of that country, and of the information respecting them
hitherto obtained, will be communicated so soon as we shall receive some
further relations which we have reason shortly to expect.

The receipts at the Treasury during the year ending on the 30th day of
September last have exceeded the sum of $13,000,000, which, with not
quite five millions in the Treasury at the beginning of the year, have
enabled us after meeting other demands to pay nearly two millions of the
debt contracted under the British treaty and convention, upward of four
millions of principal of the public debt, and four millions of interest.
These payments, with those which had been made in three years and a half
preceding, have extinguished of the funded debt nearly eighteen millions
of principal. Congress by their act of November 10, 1803, authorized us
to borrow $1,750,000 toward meeting the claims of our citizens assumed
by the convention with France. We have not, however, made use of this
authority, because the sum of four millions and a half, which remained
in the Treasury on the same 30th day of September last, with the
receipts which we may calculate on for the ensuing year, besides paying
the annual sum of $8,000,000 appropriated to the funded debt and meeting
all the current demands which may be expected, will enable us to pay
the whole sum of $3,750,000 assumed by the French convention and still
leave us a surplus of nearly $1,000,000 at our free disposal. Should
you concur in the provisions of arms and armed vessels recommended by
the circumstances of the times, this surplus will furnish the means of
doing so.

On this first occasion of addressing Congress since, by the choice of
my constituents, I have entered on a second term of administration, I
embrace the opportunity to give this public assurance that I will exert
my best endeavors to administer faithfully the executive department,
and will zealously cooperate with you in every measure which may
tend to secure the liberty, property, and personal safety of our
fellow-citizens, and to consolidate the republican forms and principles
of our Government.

In the course of your session you shall receive all the aid which I
can give for the dispatch of public business, and all the information
necessary for your deliberations, of which the interests of our own
country and the confidenc