he crowning
merit of our institutions that they create and nourish in the vast
majority of our people a disposition and a power peaceably to remedy
abuses which have elsewhere caused the effusion of rivers of blood and
the sacrifice of thousands of the human race. The result thus far is
most honorable to the self-denial, the intelligence, and the patriotism
of our citizens; it justifies the confident hope that they will carry
through the reform which has been so well begun, and that they will go
still further than they have yet gone in illustrating the important
truth that a people as free and enlightened as ours will, whenever
it becomes necessary, show themselves to be indeed capable of
self-government by voluntarily adopting appropriate remedies for every
abuse, and submitting to temporary sacrifices, however great, to insure
their permanent welfare.

My own exertions for the furtherance of these desirable objects have
been bestowed throughout my official career with a zeal that is
nourished by ardent wishes for the welfare of my country, and by an
unlimited reliance on the wisdom that marks its ultimate decision on all
great and controverted questions. Impressed with the solemn obligations
imposed upon me by the Constitution, desirous also of laying before my
fellow-citizens, with whose confidence and support I have been so highly
honored, such measures as appear to me conducive to their prosperity,
and anxious to submit to their fullest consideration the grounds upon
which my opinions are formed, I have on this as on preceding occasions
freely offered my views on those points of domestic policy that seem
at the present time most prominently to require the action of the
Government. I know that they will receive from Congress that full and
able consideration which the importance of the subjects merits, and
I can repeat the assurance heretofore made that I shall cheerfully and
readily cooperate with you in every measure that will tend to promote
the welfare of the Union.

M. VAN BUREN.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

CITY OF WASHINGTON, _December 4, 1839_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of the Treasury,
exhibiting certain transfers of appropriations that have been made in
that Department in pursuance of the powers vested in the President of
the United States by the act of Congress of the 3d of March, 1809,
entitled "An act furthe