e first quarter and
the estimated receipts for the remaining three quarters amount together
to $67,918,734; thus affording in all, as the available resources of the
current fiscal year, the sum of $86,856,710.

If to the actual expenditures of the first quarter of the current
fiscal year be added the probable expenditures for the remaining three
quarters, as estimated by the Secretary of the Treasury, the sum total
will be $71,226,846, thereby leaving an estimated balance in the
Treasury on July 1, 1856, of $15,623,863.41.

In the above-estimated expenditures of the present fiscal year are
included $3,000,000 to meet the last installment of the ten millions
provided for in the late treaty with Mexico and $7,750,000 appropriated
on account of the debt due to Texas, which two sums make an aggregate
amount of $10,750,000 and reduce the expenditures, actual or estimated,
for ordinary objects of the year to the sum of $60,476,000.

The amount of the public debt at the commencement of the present fiscal
year was $40,583,631, and, deduction being made of subsequent payments,
the whole public debt of the Federal Government remaining at this time
is less than $40,000,000. The remnant of certain other Government
stocks, amounting to $243,000, referred to in my last message as
outstanding, has since been paid.

I am fully persuaded that it would be difficult to devise a system
superior to that by which the fiscal business of the Government is
now conducted. Notwithstanding the great number of public agents of
collection and disbursement, it is believed that the checks and guards
provided, including the requirement of monthly returns, render it
scarcely possible for any considerable fraud on the part of those agents
or neglect involving hazard of serious public loss to escape detection.
I renew, however, the recommendation heretofore made by me of the
enactment of a law declaring it felony on the part of public officers
to insert false entries in their books of record or account or to make
false returns, and also requiring them on the termination of their
service to deliver to their successors all books, records, and other
objects of a public nature in their custody.

Derived, as our public revenue is, in chief part from duties on imports,
its magnitude affords gratifying evidence of the prosperity, not only of
our commerce, but of the other great interests upon which that depends.

The principle that all moneys not required