urces during the next year, will, it is believed, be sufficient to
enable the Government to meet every engagement and have a suitable
balance in the Treasury at the end of the year, if the remedial measures
connected with the customs and the public lands heretofore recommended
are adopted and the new appropriations by Congress shall not carry the
expenditures beyond the official estimates.

The new system established by Congress for the safe-keeping of the
public money, prescribing the kind of currency to be received for the
public revenue and providing additional guards and securities against
losses, has now been several months in operation. Although it might be
premature upon an experience of such limited duration to form a definite
opinion in regard to the extent of its influences in correcting many
evils under which the Federal Government and the country have hitherto
suffered, especially those that have grown out of banking expansions, a
depreciated currency, and official defalcations, yet it is but right to
say that nothing has occurred in the practical operation of the system
to weaken in the slightest degree, but much to strengthen, the confident
anticipations of its friends. The grounds of these have been heretofore
so fully explained as to require no recapitulation. In respect to the
facility and convenience it affords in conducting the public service,
and the ability of the Government to discharge through its agency every
duty attendant on the collection, transfer, and disbursement of the
public money with promptitude and success, I can say with confidence
that the apprehensions of those who felt it to be their duty to oppose
its adoption have proved to be unfounded. On the contrary, this branch
of the fiscal affairs of the Government has been, and it is believed may
always be, thus carried on with every desirable facility and security.
A few changes and improvements in the details of the system, without
affecting any principles involved in it, will be submitted to you by the
Secretary of the Treasury, and will, I am sure, receive at your hands
that attention to which they may on examination be found to be entitled.

I have deemed this brief summary of our fiscal affairs necessary
to the due performance of a duty specially enjoined upon me by the
Constitution. It will serve also to illustrate more fully the principles
by which I have been guided in reference to two contested points in our
public policy which