our extensive country we have generally to observe abodes of
health and regions of plenty. In our civil and political relations we
have peace without and tranquillity within our borders. We are, as a
people, increasing with unabated rapidity in population, wealth, and
national resources, and whatever differences of opinion exist among us
with regard to the mode and the means by which we shall turn the
beneficence of Heaven to the improvement of our own condition, there is
yet a spirit animating us all which will not suffer the bounties of
Providence to be showered upon us in vain, but will receive them with
grateful hearts, and apply them with unwearied hands to the advancement
of the general good.

Of the subjects recommended to Congress at their last session, some were
then definitively acted upon. Others, left unfinished, but partly
matured, will recur to your attention without heeding a renewal of
notice from me. The purpose of this communication will be to present to
your view the general aspect of our public affairs at this moment and
the measures which have been taken to carry into effect the intentions
of the Legislature as signified by the laws then and heretofore enacted.

In our intercourse with the other nations of the earth we have still the
happiness of enjoying peace and a general good understanding, qualified,
however, in several important instances by collisions of interest and by
unsatisfied claims of justice, to the settlement of which the
constitutional interposition of the legislative authority may become
ultimately indispensable.

By the decease of the Emperor Alexander, of Russia, which occurred
contemporaneously with the commencement of the last session of Congress,
the United States have been deprived of a long-tried, steady, and
faithful friend. Born to the inheritance of absolute power and trained
in the school of adversity, from which no power on earth, however
absolute, is exempt, that monarch from his youth had been taught to feel
the force and value of public opinion and to be sensible that the
interests of his own Government would best be promoted by a frank and
friendly intercourse with this Republic, as those of his people would be
advanced by a liberal commercial intercourse with our country. A candid
and confidential interchange of sentiments between him and the
Government of the United States upon the affairs of Southern America
took place at a period not long preceding his demise,