ery wise
expedient for preventing a calamity so distressing to individual
sufferers and so prejudicial to our national commerce.

That our finances are in a prosperous state notwithstanding the
commercial derangements resulting from this calamity and from external
embarrassments is a satisfactory manifestation of the great extent and
solidity of the public resources. Connected with this situation of our
fiscal concerns, the assurance that the legal provisions for obtaining
revenue by direct taxation will fulfill the views of the Legislature is
peculiarly acceptable.

Desirous as we are that all causes of hostility may be removed by the
amicable adjustment of national differences, we learn with satisfaction
that in pursuance of our treaties with Spain and with Great Britain
advances have been made for definitively settling the controversies
relative to the southern and northeastern limits of the United States.
With similar sentiments have we received your information that the
proceedings under commissions authorized by the same treaties afford to
a respectable portion of our citizens the prospect of a final decision
on their claims for maritime injuries committed by subjects of those
powers.

It would be the theme of mutual felicitation were we assured of
experiencing similar moderation and justice from the French Republic,
between which and the United States differences have unhappily arisen;
but this is denied us by the ultimate failure of the measures which have
been taken by this Government toward an amicable adjustment of those
differences and by the various inadmissible pretensions on the part of
that nation.

The continuing in force the decree of January last, to which you
have more particularly pointed our attention, ought of itself to be
considered as demonstrative of the real intentions of the French
Government. That decree proclaims a predatory warfare against the
unquestionable rights of neutral commerce which with our means of
defense our interest and our honor command us to repel. It therefore
now becomes the United States to be as determined in resistance as
they have been patient in suffering and condescending in negotiation.

While those who direct the affairs of France persist in the enforcement
of decrees so hostile to our essential rights, their conduct forbids us
to confide in any of their professions of amity.

As, therefore, the conduct of France hitherto exhibits nothing which
ought to cha