discrimination having reference to revenue, but at the same time
necessarily affording incidental protection to manufacturing industry,
it seems equally probable that duties on some articles of importation
will have to be advanced above 20 per cent. In performing this important
work of revising the tariff of duties, which in the present emergency
would seem to be indispensable, I can not too strongly recommend the
cultivation of a spirit of mutual harmony and concession, to which the
Government itself owes its origin, and without the continued exercise of
which jarring and discord would universally prevail.

An additional reason for the increase of duties in some instances beyond
the rate of 20 per cent will exist in fulfilling the recommendations
already made, and now repeated, of making adequate appropriations for
the defenses of the country.

By the express provision of the act distributing the proceeds of the
sales of the public lands among the States its operation is _ipso facto_
to cease so soon as the rate of the duties shall exceed the limits
prescribed in the act.

In recommending the adoption of measures for distributing the proceeds
of the public lands among the States at the commencement of the last
session of Congress such distribution was urged by arguments and
considerations which appeared to me then and appear to me now of great
weight, and was placed on the condition that it should not render
necessary any departure from the act of 1833. It is with sincere regret
that I now perceive the necessity of departing from that act, because I
am well aware that expectations justly entertained by some of the States
will be disappointed by any occasion which shall withhold from them the
proceeds of the lands. But the condition was plainly expressed in the
message and was inserted in terms equally plain in the law itself, and
amidst the embarrassments which surround the country on all sides and
beset both the General and the State Governments it appears to me that
the object first and highest in importance is to establish the credit of
this Government and to place it on durable foundations, and thus afford
the most effectual support to the credit of the States, equal at least
to what it would receive from a direct distribution of the proceeds of
the sales of the public lands.

When the distribution law was passed there was reason to anticipate that
there soon would be a real surplus to distribute. On that assum