information
in relation to the Navy of the United States. While every effort has
been and will continue to be made to retrench all superfluities and lop
off all excrescences which from time to time may have grown up, yet it
has not been regarded as wise or prudent to recommend any material
change in the annual appropriations. The interests which are involved
are of too important a character to lead to the recommendation of any
other than a liberal policy. Adequate appropriations ought to be made to
enable the Executive to fit out all the ships that are now in a course
of building or that require repairs for active service in the shortest
possible time should any emergency arise which may require it. An
efficient navy, while it is the cheapest means of public defense,
enlists in its support the feelings of pride and confidence which
brilliant deeds and heroic valor have heretofore served to strengthen
and confirm.

I refer you particularly to that part of the Secretary's report which
has reference to recent experiments in the application of steam and in
the construction of our war steamers, made under the superintendence
of distinguished officers of the Navy. In addition to other manifest
improvements in the construction of the steam engine and application of
the motive power which has rendered them more appropriate to the uses of
ships of war, one of those officers has brought into use a power which
makes the steamship most formidable either for attack or defense. I can
not too strongly recommend this subject to your consideration and do not
hesitate to express my entire conviction of its great importance.

I call your particular attention also to that portion of the Secretary's
report which has reference to the act of the late session of Congress
which prohibited the transfer of any balance of appropriation from other
heads of appropriation to that for building, equipment, and repair.
The repeal of that prohibition will enable the Department to give
renewed employment to a large class of workmen who have been necessarily
discharged in consequence of the want of means to pay them--a
circumstance attended, especially at this season of the year, with much
privation and suffering.

It gives me great pain to announce to you the loss of the steamship
the _Missouri_ by fire in the Bay of Gibraltar, where she had stopped
to renew her supplies of coal on her voyage to Alexandria, with Mr.
Cushing, the American minister to Ch