articular interests
of the people may not be devised which will neither infringe the
Constitution nor affect the object which the provision in question
was intended to secure. The growing population, already considerable,
and the increasing business of the District, which it is believed
already interferes with the deliberations of Congress on great national
concerns, furnish additional motives for recommending this subject to
your consideration.

When we view the great blessings with which our country has been
favored, those which we now enjoy, and the means which we possess of
handing them down unimpaired to our latest posterity, our attention is
irresistibly drawn to the source from whence they flow. Let us, then,
unite in offering our most grateful acknowledgments for these blessings
to the Divine Author of All Good.

JAMES MONROE.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

NOVEMBER 30, 1818.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I lay before the Senate, for their advice and consent, the several
treaties which have recently been made with the Chickasaws, the Quapaws,
the Wyandot, Seneca, Delaware, Shawnese, Potawatamies, Ottawas, and
Chippewas, the Peoria, Kaskaskias, Mitchigamia, Cahokia, and Tamarois,
the Great and Little Osages, the Weas, Potawatamies, Delaware and Miami,
the Wyandot, and the four Pawnees tribes of Indians.

By reference to the journal of the commissioners it appears that George
and Levi Colbert have bargained and sold to the United States the
reservations made to them by the treaty of September, 1816, and that
a deed of trust of the same has been made by them to James Jackson,
of Nashville. I would therefore suggest, in case the Chickasaw treaty
be approved by the Senate, the propriety of providing by law for
the payment of the sum stipulated to be given to them for their
reservations.

JAMES MONROE.

DECEMBER 2, 1818.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I transmit to the Senate copies of such of the documents referred to in
the message of the 17th of last month as have been prepared since that
period. They contain a copy of the reports of Mr. Rodney and Mr. Graham,
two of the commissioners to South America, who returned first from the
mission, and of the papers connected with those reports. They also
present a full view of the operations of our troops employed in the
Seminole war in Florida.

It would have been gratifying to me to have communicated with the
message all the documents