iations will be requisite.

I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at
which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw
the citizens of the United States from all further participation in
those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on
the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the
reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager
to proscribe. Although no law you may pass can take prohibitory effect
till the first day of the year 1808, yet the intervening period is
not too long to prevent by timely notice expeditions which can not
be completed before that day.

The receipts at the Treasury during the year ending on the 30th day of
September last have amounted to near $15,000,000, which have enabled us,
after meeting the current demands, to pay $2,700,000 of the American
claims in part of the price of Louisiana; to pay of the funded debt
upward of three millions of principal and nearly four of interest, and,
in addition, to reimburse in the course of the present month near two
millions of 5-1/2 per cent stock. These payments and reimbursements of
the funded debt, with those which had been made in the four years and a
half preceding, will at the close of the present year have extinguished
upward of twenty-three millions of principal.

The duties composing the Mediterranean fund will cease by law at the
end of the present session. Considering, however, that they are levied
chiefly on luxuries and that we have an impost on salt, a necessary
of life, the free use of which otherwise is so important, I recommend
to your consideration the suppression of the duties on salt and the
continuation of the Mediterranean fund instead thereof for a short time,
after which that also will become unnecessary for any purpose now within
contemplation.

When both of these branches of revenue shall in this way be relinquished
there will still ere long be an accumulation of moneys in the Treasury
beyond the installments of public debt which we are permitted by
contract to pay. They can not then, without a modification assented to
by the public creditors, be applied to the extinguishment of this debt
and the complete liberation of our revenues, the most desirable of all
objects. Nor, if our peace continues, will they be wanting for any other
existing purpose. The question therefore now comes forward, To what
other objects shall these