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and Regency of Algiers will in all present appearance be crowned with
success, but under great, though inevitable, disadvantages in the
pecuniary transactions occasioned by that war, which will render further
provision necessary. The actual liberation of all our citizens who were
prisoners in Algiers, while it gratifies every feeling heart, is itself
an earnest of a satisfactory termination of the whole negotiation.
Measures are in operation for effecting treaties with the Regencies
of Tunis and Tripoli.

To an active external commerce the protection of a naval force is
indispensable. This is manifest with regard to wars in which a State
is itself a party. But besides this, it is in our own experience that
the most sincere neutrality is not a sufficient guard against the
depredations of nations at war. To secure respect to a neutral flag
requires a naval force organized and ready to vindicate it from insult
or aggression. This may even prevent the necessity of going to war by
discouraging belligerent powers from committing such violations of
the rights of the neutral party as may, first or last, leave no other
option. From the best information I have been able to obtain it would
seem as if our trade to the Mediterranean without a protecting force
will always be insecure and our citizens exposed to the calamities
from which numbers of them have but just been relieved.

These considerations invite the United States to look to the means, and
to set about the gradual creation of a navy. The increasing progress of
their navigation promises them at no distant period the requisite supply
of seamen, and their means in other respects favor the undertaking. It
is an encouragement, likewise, that their particular situation will give
weight and influence to a moderate naval force in their hands. Will it
not, then, be advisable to begin without delay to provide and lay up the
materials for the building and equipping of ships of war, and to proceed
in the work by degrees, in proportion as our resources shall render it
practicable without inconvenience, so that a future war of Europe may
not find our commerce in the same unprotected state in which it was
found by the present?

Congress have repeatedly, and not without success, directed their
attention to the encouragement of manufactures. The object is of too
much consequence not to insure a continuance of their efforts in every
way which shall appear eligible. As a general r