POOR-RATE RETURNS. A RETURN of the Poor-Rates in every Parish in England and Wales, for the years ending 25th March 1826, 1827, 1828, and 1829; together with the amount of the estimates of the annual value of Real Property, assessed in April 1815, for the purposes of the Property-Tax. Total of England 49,660,7285,676,326 1x|5,179,877 116,031,200 76,068,268 17 Abstract of the Net Produce of the Revenue of Great Britain, in the years ended 5th January 1830 and 1831. Applied to the consolidated fund To pay off exchequer bills charged on the annual duties PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 1. DOMESTIC. Message from the President of the United States, to the Twenty-` first Congress.-Second Session. Fellow-Citizens of the Senate, and House of Representatives. The pleasure I have in congratulating you on your return to your constitutional duties is much heightened by the satisfaction which the condition of our beloved country at this period justly inspires. The benificent Author of all good has granted to us, during the present year, health, peace, and plenty, and numerous causes for joy in the wonderful success which attends the progress of our free institutions. With a population unparalleled in its increase, and possessing a character which combines the hardihood of enterprise with the considerateness of wisdom, we see in every section of our happy country a steady improvement in the means of social intercourse, and correspondent effects upon the genius and laws of our extended republic. The apparent exceptions to the harmony of the prospect are to be referred rather to the inevitable diversities in the various interests which enter into the composition of so extensive a whole, than to any want of attachment to the Union-interests whose collisions serve only, in the end, to foster the spirit of conciliation and patriotism, so essential to the preservation of that Union, which, I most devoutly hope, is destined to prove imperishable. In the midst of these blessings, we have recently witnessed changes in the condition of other nations, which may, in their consequences, call for the utmost vigilance, wisdom, and unanimity in our councils, and the exercise of all the moderation and patriotism of our people. The important modifications of their government, effected with ed to the end, will secure to him the proud appellation of Patriot King, it is not in his success, but in that of the great principle which has borne him to the throne the paramount authority of the public will-that the American people rejoice. I am happy to inform you that the anticipations which were indulged at the date of my last communication on the subject of our foreign affairs, have been fully realised in several important particulars. An arrangement has been effected with Great Britain, in relation to the trade between the U. States and her West India and North American colonies, which has settled a question that has for years afforded matter for contention and almost uninterrupted discussion, and has been the subject of no less than six negotiations, in a manner which promises results highly favorable to the parties. SO much courage and wisdom by the people of France, afford a happy presage of their future course, and have naturally elicited from the kindred feelings of this nation that spontaneous and universal burst of applause in which you have participated. In congratulating you, my fellow-citizens, upon an event so auspicious to the dearest interests of mankind, I do no more than respond to the voice of my country, without transcending, in the slightest degree, that salutary maxim of the illustrious Washington, which enjoins an abstinence from all interference with the internal affairs of other nations. From a people exercising, in the most unlimited degree, the right of self-government, and enjoying, as derived from this proud characteristic, under the favor of heaven, much of the happiness with which they are blessed; a people who can point in triumph to their free institutions, and challenge comparison with the fruits they bear, as well as with the moderation, intelligence, and energy, with which they are administered; us from a participation therein, from such a people, the deepest has never been denied by the sympathy was to be expected in United States. But we have a struggle for the sacred princi- contended, and with reason, that ples of liberty, conducted in a if, at any time, Great Britain may spirit every way worthy of the desire the productions of this cause, and crowned by an heroic country, as necessary to her colmoderation which has disarmed onies, they must be received upon revolution of its terrors. Not- principles of just reciprocity; and withstanding the strong assurances further, that it is making an invidwhich the man whom we so sin- ious and unfriendly distinction, to cerely love and justly admire has open her colonial ports to the given to the world of the high vessels of other nations, and close character of the present king of them against those of the United the French, and which, if sustain- States. The abstract right of Great Britain to monopolize the trade with her colonies, or to exclude Antecedently to 1794, a portion of our productions was admitted into the colonial islands of Great Britain, by particular concession, limited to the term of one year, but renewed from year to year. In the transportation of these productions, however, our vessels were not allowed to engage; this being a privilege reserved to British shipping, by which alone our produce could be taken to the islands, and theirs brought to us in return. From Newfoundland and her continental possessions, all our productions, as well as our vessels, were excluded, with occasional relaxations, by which, in seasons of distress, the former were admitted in British bottoms. By the treaty of 1794, she offered to concede to us, for a limited time, the right of carrying to her West India possessions, in our vessels not exceeding seventy tons burden, and upon the same terms as British vessels, any productions of the United States which British vessels might import therefrom. But this privilege was coupled with conditions which are supposed to have led to its rejection by the Senate; that is, that American vessels should land their return cargoes in the United States only; and, moreover, that they should, during the continuance of the privilege, be precluded from carrying molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, or cotton, either from those islands or from the United States, to any other part of the world. Great Britain readily consented to expunge this article from the treaty; and subsequent attempts to ar range the terms of the trade, either by treaty stipulations or concerted legislation,having failed, it has been successively suspended and allowed, according to the varying legislation of the parties. The following are the prominent points which have, in later years, separated the two governments. Besides a restriction, whereby all importations into her colonies in American vessels are confined to our own products carried hence, a restriction to which it does not appear that we have ever objected, a leading object on the part of Great Britain has been to prevent us from becoming the carriers of British West India commodities to any other country than our own. On the part of the United States, it has been contended, 1st. That the subject should be regulated by treaty stipulations, in preference to separate legislation: 2d. That our productions, when imported into the colonies in question,should not be subject to higher duties thanthe productions of the mother country, or of her other colonial possessions; and, 3d. That our vessels should be allowed to participate in the circuitous trade between the United States and different parts of the British dominions. The first point, after having been, for a long time, strenuously insisted upon by Great Britain, was given up by the act of Parliament of July, 1825; all vessels suffered to trade with the colonies being permitted to clear from thence with any articles which British vessels might export, and proceed to any part of the world, |