, and it will need legislative
revision to adapt it to the extension of our commerce and to the more
intimate intercourse which has been instituted with the Government and
people of that vast Empire. China seems to be accepting with hearty
good-will the conventional laws which regulate commercial and social
intercourse among the Western nations.

Owing to the peculiar situation of Japan and the anomalous form of its
Government, the action of that empire in performing treaty stipulations is
inconstant and capricious. Nevertheless, good progress has been effected
by the Western powers, moving with enlightened concert. Our own pecuniary
claims have been allowed or put in course of settlement, and the inland
sea has been reopened to commerce. There is reason also to believe that
these proceedings have increased rather than diminished the friendship of
Japan toward the United States.

The ports of Norfolk, Fernandina, and Pensacola have been opened by
proclamation. It is hoped that foreign merchants will now consider whether
it is not safer and more profitable to themselves, as well as just to
the United States, to resort to these and other open ports than it is to
pursue, through many hazards and at vast cost, a contraband trade with
other ports which are closed, if not by actual military occupation, at
least by a lawful and effective blockade.

For myself, I have no doubt of the power and duty of the Executive, under
the law of nations, to exclude enemies of the human race from an asylum in
the United States. If Congress should think that proceedings in such
cases lack the authority of law, or ought to be further regulated by it, I
recommend that provision be made for effectually preventing foreign
slave traders from acquiring domicile and facilities for their criminal
occupation in our country.

It is possible that if it were a new and open question the maritime
powers, with the lights they now enjoy, would not concede the privileges
of a naval belligerent to the insurgents of the United States, destitute,
as they are, and always have been, equally of ships of war and of ports
and harbors. Disloyal emissaries have been neither assiduous nor more
successful during the last year than they were before that time in their
efforts, under favor of that privilege, to embroil our country in foreign
wars. The desire and determination of the governments of the maritime
states to defeat that design are believed to be as sincere as