every principle of justice to a candid examination. The proposal
last made to the French Government has been to refer the subject which
has formed an obstacle to this consideration to the determination of a
sovereign the common friend of both. To this offer no definitive answer
has yet been received, but the gallant and honorable spirit which has at
all times been the pride and glory of France will not ultimately permit
the demands of innocent sufferers to be extinguished in the mere
consciousness of the power to reject them.

A new treaty of amity, navigation, and commerce has been concluded with
the Kingdom of Sweden, which will be submitted to the Senate for their
advice with regard to its ratification. At a more recent date a minister
plenipotentiary from the Hanseatic Republics of Hamburg, Lubeck, and
Bremen has been received, charged with a special mission for the
negotiation of a treaty of amity and commerce between that ancient and
renowned league and the United States. This negotiation has accordingly
been commenced, and is now in progress, the result of which will, if
successful, be also submitted to the Senate for their consideration.

Since the accession of the Emperor Nicholas to the imperial throne of
all the Russias the friendly dispositions toward the United States so
constantly manifested by his predecessor have continued unabated, and
have been recently testified by the appointment of a minister
plenipotentiary to reside at this place. From the interest taken by this
Sovereign in behalf of the suffering Greeks and from the spirit with
which others of the great European powers are cooperating with him the
friends of freedom and of humanity may indulge the hope that they will
obtain relief from that most unequal of conflicts which they have so
long and so gallantly sustained; that they will enjoy the blessing of
self-government, which by their sufferings in the cause of liberty they
have richly earned, and that their independence will be secured by those
liberal institutions of which their country furnished the earliest
examples in the history of mankind, and which have consecrated to
immortal remembrance the very soil for which they are now again
profusely pouring forth their blood. The sympathies which the people and
Government of the United States have so warmly indulged with their cause
have been acknowledged by their Government in a letter of thanks, which
I have received from their illustrious Pre