the other objects for which the
public faith stands now pledged. Allow me, moreover, to hope that it
will be a favorite policy with you, not merely to secure a payment of
the interest of the debt funded, but as far and as fast as the growing
resources of the country will permit to exonerate it of the principal
itself. The appropriation you have made of the Western land explains
your dispositions on this subject, and I am persuaded that the sooner
that valuable fund can be made to contribute, along with other means,
to the actual reduction of the public debt the more salutary will the
measure be to every public interest, as well as the more satisfactory
to our constituents.

_Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Representatives_:

In pursuing the various and weighty business of the present session
I indulge the fullest persuasion that your consultations will be equally
marked with wisdom and animated by the love of your country. In whatever
belongs to my duty you shall have all the cooperation which an
undiminished zeal for its welfare can inspire. It will be happy for us
both, and our best reward, if, by a successful administration of our
respective trusts, we can make the established Government more and more
instrumental in promoting the good of our fellow-citizens, and more and
more the object of their attachment and confidence.

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

ADDRESS OF THE SENATE TO GEORGE WASHINGTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES.

The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

We receive, sir, with particular satisfaction the communications
contained in your speech, which confirm to us the progressive state
of the public credit and afford at the same time a new proof of the
solidity of the foundation on which it rests; and we cheerfully join in
the acknowledgment which is due to the probity and patriotism of the
mercantile and marine part of our fellow-citizens, whose enlightened
attachment to the principles of good government is not less conspicuous
in this than it has been in other important respects.

In confidence that every constitutional preliminary has been observed,
we assure you of our disposition to concur in giving the requisite
sanction to the admission of Kentucky as a distinct member of the Union;
in doing which we shall anticipate the happy effects to be expected from
the sentiments of attachment toward the Union and its present Government
which have been expressed by the patriotic inhabitants of