benevolent policy toward the unhappy and deluded race of people in our neighborhood. The amount of the population of the United States, determined by the returns of the census, is a source of the most pleasing reflections whether it be viewed in relation to our national safety and respectability or as a proof of that felicity in the situation of our country which favors so unexampled a rapidity in its growth. Nor ought any to be insensible to the additional motive suggested by this important fact to perpetuate the free Government established, with a wise administration of it, to a portion of the earth which promises such an increase of the number which is to enjoy those blessings within the limits of the United States. We shall proceed with all the respect due to your patriotic recommendations and with a deep sense of the trust committed to us by our fellow-citizens to take into consideration the various and important. matters falling within the present session; and in discussing and deciding each we shall feel every disposition whilst we are pursuing the public welfare, which must be the supreme object with all our constituents, to accommodate as far as possible the means of attaining it to the sentiments and wishes of every part of them. OCTOBER 27, 1791. REPLY OF THE PRESIDENT. GENTLEMEN: The pleasure I derive from an assurance of your attention to the objects I have recommended to you is doubled by your concurrence in the testimony I have borne to the prosperous condition of our public affairs. Relying on the sanctions of your enlightened judgment and on your patriotic aid, I shall be the more encouraged in all my endeavors for the public weal, and particularly in those which may be required on my part for executing the salutary measures I anticipate from your present deliberations. OCTOBER 28, 1791. GO WASHINGTON. SPECIAL MESSAGES. UNITED STATES, October 26, 1791. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: I lay before you copies of the following acts, which have been transmitted to me during the recess of Congress, viz: An act passed by the legislature of New Hampshire for ceding to the United States the fort and light-house belonging to the said State. An act of the legislature of Pennsylvania ratifying on behalf of said State the first article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States as proposed by Congress; and An act of the legislature of North Carolina granting the use of the jails within that State to the United States. Gentlemen of the Senate: GO WASHINGTON. UNITED STATES, October 26, 1791. I have directed the Secretary of War to lay before you for your consideration all the papers relative to the late negotiations with the Cherokee Indians, and the treaty concluded with that tribe on the 2d day of July last by the superintendent of the southern district, and I request your advice whether I shall ratify the same. I also lay before you the instructions to Colonel Pickering and his conferences with the Six Nations of Indians. These conferences were for the purpose of conciliation, and at a critical period, to withdraw those Indians to a greater distance from the theater of war, in order to prevent their being involved therein. It might not have been necessary to have requested your opinion on this business had not the commissioner, with good intentions, but incautiously, made certain ratifications of lands unauthorized by his instructions and unsupported by the Constitution. It therefore became necessary to disavow the transaction explicitly in a letter written by my orders to the governor of New York on the 17th of August last. The speeches to the Cornplanter and other Seneca chiefs, the instructions to Colonel Proctor, and his report, and other messages and directions are laid before you for your information and as evidences that all proper lenient measures preceded the exercise of coercion. The letters to the chief of the Creeks are also laid before you, to evince that the requisite steps have been taken to produce a full compliance with the treaty made with that nation on the 7th of August, 1790. GO WASHINGTON. UNITED STATES, October 27, 1791. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: I lay before you a copy of a letter and of sundry documents which I have received from the governor of Pennsylvania, respecting certain persons who are said to have fled from justice out of the State of Pennsylvania into that of Virginia, together with a report of the AttorneyGeneral of the United States upon the same subject. I have received from the governor of North Carolina a copy of an act of the general assembly of that State, authorizing him to convey to the United States the right and jurisdiction of the said State over 1 acre of land in Occacock Island and 10 acres on the Cape Island, within the said State, for the purpose of erecting light-houses thereon, together with the deed of the governor in pursuance thereof and the original conveyances made to the State by the individual proprietors, which original conveyances contain conditions that the light-house on Occacock shall be built before the 1st day of January, 1801, and that on the Cape Island before the 8th day of October, 1800. And I have caused these several papers to be deposited in the office of the Secretary of State. A statement of the returns of the enumeration of the inhabitants of the United States which have been received will at this time be laid before you. GO WASHINGTON. UNITED STATES, October 27, 1791. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: I have directed the Secretary of War to lay before you, for your information, the reports of Brigadier-General Scott and Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant Wilkinson, the officers who commanded the two expeditions against the Wabash Indians in the months of June and August last, together with the instructions by virtue of which the said expeditions were undertaken. When the operations now depending shall be terminated, the reports relative thereto shall also be laid before you. GO WASHINGTON. UNITED STATES, October 31, 1791. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: I send you herewith the arrangement which has been made by me, pursuant to the act entitled "An act repealing after the last day of June next the duties heretofore laid upon distilled spirits imported from abroad and laying others in their stead, and also upon spirits distilled within the United States, and for appropriating the same," in respect to the subdivision of the several districts created by the said act into surveys of inspection, the appointment of officers for the same, and the assignment of compensations. GO WASHINGTON. UNITED STATES, November 1, 1791. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: I received yesterday from the judge of the district of South Carolina a letter, inclosing the presentments of the grand jury to him, and stating the causes which have prevented the return of the census from that district, copies of which are now laid before you. GO WASHINGTON. UNITED STATES, November 10, 1791. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: The resolution passed at the last session of Congress, requesting the President of the United States to cause an estimate to be laid before Congress at their next session of the quantity and situation of the lands not claimed by the Indians nor granted to nor claimed by any of the citizens of the United States within the territory ceded to the United States by the State of North Carolina and within the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio, has been referred to the Secretary of State, a copy of whose report on that subject I now lay before you, together with the copy of a letter accompanying it. GO WASHINGTON. UNITED STATES, November 11, 1791. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: I have received from the governor of Virginia a resolution of the general assembly of that Commonwealth, ratifying the first article of the amendments proposed by Congress to the Constitution of the United States, a copy of which and of the letter accompanying it I now lay before you. Sundry papers relating to the purchase by Judge Symmes of the lands. on the Great Miami having been communicated to me, I have thought it proper to lay the same before you for your information on that subject. GO WASHINGTON. UNITED STATES, December 12, 1791. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: It is with great concern that I communicate to you the information received from Major-General St. Clair of the misfortune which has befallen the troops under his command. Although the national loss is considerable according to the scale of the event, yet it may be repaired without great difficulty, excepting as to the brave men who have fallen on the occasion, and who are à subject of public as well as private regret. A further communication will shortly be made of all such matters as shall be necessary to enable the Legislature to judge of the future measures which it may be proper to pursue. GO WASHINGTON. UNITED STATES, December 13, 1791. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: I place before you the plan of a city that has been laid out within the district of 10 miles square, which was fixed upon for the permanent seat of the Government of the United States. M P-VOL 1-8 GO WASHINGTON. UNITED STATES, December 20, 1791. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: I lay before you the copy of a letter which I have received from the governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and of sundry documents which accompanied it, relative to a contract for the purchase of a certain tract of land bounding on Lake Erie, together with a copy of a report of the Secretary of State on the same subject. GO WASHINGTON. UNITED STATES, December 30, 1791. Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: I lay before you a copy of the ratification by the Commonwealth of Virginia of the articles of amendment proposed by Congress to the Constitution of the United States, and a copy of a letter which accompanied said ratification from the governor of Virginia. GO WASHINGTON. Gentlemen of the Senate: UNITED STATES, January 11, 1792. I lay before you the following report, which has been made to me by the Secretary of State: DECEMBER 22, 1791. The Secretary of State reports to the President of the United States that one of the commissioners of Spain, in the name of both, has lately communicated to him verbally, by order of his Court, that His Catholic Majesty, apprised of our solicitude to have some arrangements made respecting our free navigation of the river Mississippi and the use of a port thereon, is ready to enter into treaty thereon at Madrid. The Secretary of State is of opinion that this overture should be attended to without delay, and that the proposal of treating at Madrid, though not what might have been desired, should yet be accepted, and a commission plenipotentiary made out for the purpose. That Mr. Carmichael, the present chargé d'affaires of the United States at Madrid, from the local acquaintance which he must have acquired with persons and circumstances, would be an useful and proper member of the commission, but that it would be useful also to join with him some person more particularly acquainted with the circumstances of the navigation to be treated of. That the fund appropriated by the act providing the means of intercourse between the United States and foreign nations will insufficiently furnish the ordinary and regular demands on it, and is consequently inadequate to the mission of an additional commissioner express from hence. That therefore it will be advisable on this account, as well as for the sake of dispatch, to constitute some one of the ministers of the United States in Europe, jointly with Mr. Carmichael, commissioners plenipotentiary for the special purpose of negotiating and concluding with any person or persons duly authorized by His Catholic Majesty a convention or treaty for the free navigation of the river Mississippi by the citizens of the United States under such accommodations with respect to a port and other circumstances as may render the said navigation practicable, |