us and to their peace with all others, while those more remote do not present appearances sufficiently quiet to justify the intermission of military precaution on our part.

The great tribes on our southwestern quarter, much advanced beyond the others in agriculture and household arts, appear tranquil and identifying their views with ours in proportion to their advancement. With the whole of these people, in every quarter, I shall continue to inculcate peace and friendship with all their neighbors and perseverance in those occupations and pursuits which will best promote their own well-being. The appropriations of the last session for the defense of our seaport towns and harbors were made under expectation that a continuance of our peace would permit us to proceed in that work according to our convenience. It has been thought better to apply the sums then given toward the defense of New York, Charleston, and New Orleans chiefly, as most open and most likely first to need protection, and to leave places less immediately in danger to the provisions of the present session.

The gunboats, too, already provided have on a like principle been chiefly assigned to New York, New Orleans, and the Chesapeake. Whether our movable force on the water, so material in aid of the defensive works on the land, should be augmented in this or any other form is left to the wisdom of the Legislature. For the purpose of manning these vessels in sudden attacks on our harbors it is a matter for consideration whether the seamen of the United States may not justly be formed into a special militia, to be called on for tours of duty in defense of the harbors where they shall happen to be, the ordinary militia of the place furnishing that portion which may consist of landsmen.

The moment our peace was threatened I deemed it indispensable to secure a greater provision of those articles of military stores with which our magazines were not sufficiently furnished. To have awaited a previous and special sanction by law would have lost occasions which might not be retrieved. I did not hesitate, therefore, to authorize engagements for such supplements to our existing stock as would render it adequate to the emergencies threatening us, and I trust that the Legi lature, feeling the same anxiety for the safety of our country, so materially advanced by this precaution, will approve, when done, what they would have seen so important to be done if then assembled. Expenses, also unprovided for, arose out of the necessity of calling all our gunboats into actual service for the defense of our harbors; of all which accounts will be laid before you.

Whether a regular army is to be raised, and to what extent, must depend on the information so shortly expected. In the meantime I have called on the States for quotas of militia, to be in readiness for present defense, and have, moreover, encouraged the acceptance of volunteers: and I am happy to inform you that these have offered themselves with great alacrity in every part of the Union. They are ordered to be organ

ized and ready at a moment's warning to proceed on any service to which they may be called, and every preparation within the Executive powers has been made to insure us the benefit of early exertions.

I informed Congress at their last session of the enterprises against the public peace which were believed to be in preparation by Aaron Burr and his associates, of the measures taken to defeat them and to bring the offenders to justice. Their enterprises were happily defeated by the patriotic exertions of the militia whenever called into action, by the fidelity of the Army, and energy of the commander in chief in promptly arranging the difficulties presenting themselves on the Sabine, repairing to meet those arising on the Mississippi, and dissipating before their explosion plots engendering there. I shall think it my duty to lay before you the proceedings and the evidence publicly exhibited on the arraignment of the principal offenders before the circuit court of Virginia. You will be enabled to judge whether the defect was in the testimony, in the law, in the administration of the law; and wherever it shall be found, the Legislature alone can apply or originate the remedy. The framers of our Constitution certainly supposed they had guarded as well their Government against destruction by treason as their citizens against oppression under pretense of it, and if these ends are not attained it is of importance to inquire by what means more effectual they may be secured.

or

The accounts of the receipts of revenue during the year ending on the 30th day of September last being not yet made up, a correct statement will be hereafter transmitted from the Treasury. In the meantime, it is ascertained that the receipts have amounted to near $16,000,000, which, with the five millions and a half in the Treasury at the beginning of the year, have enabled us, after meeting the current demands and interest incurred, to pay more than four millions of the principal of our funded debt. These payments, with those of the preceding five and a half years, have extinguished of the funded debt $25,500,000, being the whole which could be paid or purchased within the limits of the law and of our contracts, and have left us in the Treasury $8,500,000. A portion of this sum may be considered as a commencement of accumulation of the surpluses of revenue which, after paying the installments of debt as they shall become payable, will remain without any specific object. It may partly, indeed, be applied toward completing the defense of the exposed points of our country, on such a scale as shall be adapted to our principles and circumstances. This object is doubtless among the first entitled to attention in such a state of our finances, and it is one which, whether we have peace or war, will provide security where it is due. Whether what shall remain of this, with the future surpluses, may be usefully applied to purposes already authorized or more usefully to others requiring new authorities, or how otherwise they shall be disposed of, are questions calling for the notice of Congress, unless, indeed, they shall be superseded by a change in our public relations now awaiting

the determination of others. Whatever be that determination, it is a great consolation that it will become known at a moment when the supreme council of the nation is assembled at its post, and ready to give the aids of its wisdom and authority to whatever course the good of our country shall then call us to pursue.

Matters of minor importance will be the subjects of future communications, and nothing shall be wanting on my part which may give information or dispatch to the proceedings of the Legislature in the exercise of their high duties, and at a moment so interesting to the public welfare,

TH: JEFFERSON.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

NOVEMBER II, 1807.

To the Senate of the United States:

Some time had elapsed after the receipt of the late treaty between the United States and Tripoli before the circumstance drew particular attention that, although by the third article the wife and children of the ex-Bashaw were to be restored to him, this did not appear either to have been done or demanded; still, it was constantly expected that explanations on the subject would be received. None, however, having arrived when Mr. Davis went as consul to Tripoli, he was instructed to demand the execution of the article. He did so, but was answered by the exhibition of a declaration, signed by our negotiator the day after the signature of the treaty, allowing four years for the restoration of the family. This declaration and the letter of Mr. Davis stating what passed on the occasion are now communicated to the Senate. On the receipt of this letter I caused the correspondence of Mr. Lear to be diligently reexamined in order to ascertain whether there might have been a communication of this paper made and overlooked or forgotten. None such, however, is found. There appears only in a journalized account of the transaction by Mr. Lear, under date of June 3, a passage intimating that he should be disposed to give time rather than suffer the business to be broken off and our countrymen left in slavery; and again, that on the return of the person who passed between himself and the Bashaw, and information that the Bashaw would require time for the delivery of the family, he consented, and went ashore to consummate the treaty. This was done the next day, and being forwarded to us as ultimately signed, and found to contain no allowance of time nor any intimation that there was any stipulation but what was in the public treaty, it was supposed that the Bashaw had, in fine, abandoned the proposition, and the instructions before mentioned were consequently given to Mr. Davis.

An extract of so much of Mr. Lear's communication as relates to this circumstance is now transmitted to the Senate, the whole of the papers having been laid before them on a former occasion. How it has happened that the declaration of June 5 has never before come to our knowledge can not with certainty be said, but whether there has been a miscarriage of it or a failure of the ordinary attention and correctness of that officer in making his communications, I have thought it due to the Senate as well as to myself to explain to them the circumstances which have withheld from their knowledge, as they did from my own, a modification which, had it been placed in the public treaty, would have been relieved from the objections which candor and good faith can not but feel in its present form.

As the restoration of the family has probably been effected, a just regard to the character of the United States will require that I make to the Bashaw a candid statement of facts, and that the sacrifices of his right to the peace and friendship of the two countries, by yielding finally to the demand of Mr. Davis, be met by proper acknowledgments and reparation on our part,

TH: JEFFERSON.

NOVEMBER 19, 1807.

To the House of Representatives of the United States:

According to the request expressed in your resolution of the 18th instant, I now transmit a copy of my proclamation interdicting our harbors and waters to British armed vessels and forbidding intercourse with them, referred to in my message of the 27th of October last.

TH: JEFFERSON.

NOVEMBER 23, 1807.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:

Agreeably to the assurance given in my message at the opening of the present session of Congress, I now lay before you a copy of the proceedings and of the evidence exhibited on the arraignment of Aaron Burr and others before the circuit court of the United States held in Virginia in the course of the present year, in as authentic form as their several parts have admitted,

To the Senate of the United States:

TH: JEFFERSON.

NOVEMBER 23, 1807.

Some circumstance, which can not now be ascertained, induced a belief that an act had passed at the last session of Congress for establishing a surveyor and inspector of revenue for the port of Stonington, in Connecticut, and commissions were signed appointing Jonathan Palmer,

of Connecticut, to those offices. The error was discovered at the Treasury, and the commissions were retained; but not having been notified to me, I renewed the nomination in my message of the 9th instant to the Senate. In order to correct the error, I have canceled the temporary commissions, and now revoke the nomination which I made of the said Jonathan Palmer to the Senate.

TH: JEFFERSON.

DECEMBER 2, 1807.

To the Senate of the United States:

In compliance with the request made in the resolution of the Senate of November 30, I must inform them that when the prosecutions against Aaron Burr and his associates were instituted I delivered to the AttorneyGeneral all the evidence on the subject, formal and informal, which I had received, to be used by those employed in the prosecutions. On the receipt of the resolution of the Senate I referred it to the Attorney-General, with a request that he would enable me to comply with it by putting into my hands such of the papers as might give information relative to the conduct of John Smith, a Senator from the State of Ohio, as an alleged associate of Aaron Burr, and having this moment received from him the affidavit of Elias Glover, with an assurance that it is the only paper in his possession which is within the term of the request of the Senate, I now transmit it for their use.

TH: JEFFERSON.

DECEMBER 7, 1807.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:

Having recently received from our late minister plenipotentiary at the Court of London a duplicate of dispatches, the original of which has been sent by the Revenge schooner, not yet arrived, I hasten to lay them before both Houses of Congress. They contain the whole of what has passed between the two Governments on the subject of the outrage committed by the British ship Leopard on the frigate Chesapeake. Congress will learn from these papers the present state of the discussion on that transaction, and that it is to be transferred to this place by the mission of a special minister.

While this information will have its proper effect on their deliberations and proceedings respecting the relations between the two countries, they will be sensible that, the negotiation being still depending, it is proper for me to request that the communications may be considered as confidential,

TH: JEFFERSON.