domestic manufactures. A special attention to these subjects was
recommended in his messages to Congress. And throughout his term, he
failed not to urge these vital matters upon the attention of the people,
and their representatives. He recommended the opening of national roads
and canals--the improvement of the navigation of rivers, and the safety of
harbors--the survey of our coasts, the erection of light houses, piers,
and breakwaters. Whatever tended to facilitate communication and
transportation between extreme portions of the Union--to bring the people
of distant sections into a more direct intercourse with each other, and
bind them together by ties of a business, social and friendly nature--to
promote enterprize, industry, and enlarged views of national and
individual prosperity--obtained his earnest sanction and recommendation.
To encourage home labor--to protect our infant manufactories from a fatal
competition with foreign pauper wages--to foster and build up in the bosom
of the country a system of domestic production, which should not only
supply home consumption, and afford a home market for raw materials and
provisions, the produce of our own soil, but enable us in due time to
compete with other nations in sending our manufactures to foreign
markets--he yielded all his influence to the levying of protective duties
on foreign articles, especially such as could be produced in our own
country. The wisdom of this policy, its direct tendency to promote
national wealth and strength, and to render the Union truly independent of
the fluctuations and vicissitudes of foreign countries, cannot be doubted,
it would seem, by those possessing clear minds and sound judgment, of all
parties.

Under the faithful supervision of one so vigilant as Mr. Adams, the
foreign relations of the Government could not have been neglected. The
intimate knowledge of the condition of foreign nations, their resources
and their wants, which was possessed by himself and by Mr. Clay, the
Secretary of State, afforded facilities in this department, from which the
country reaped the richest benefit. During the four years of his
administration, more treaties were negotiated at Washington than during
the entire thirty-six years through which the preceding administrations
had extended. New treaties of amity, navigation and commerce, were
concluded with Austria, Sweden, Denmark, the Hanseatic League, Prussia,
Colombia, and Central America. Commercial