exigencies of Government, to pay from the Treasury within one year
upward of $8,000,000, principal and interest, of the public debt,
exclusive of upward of one million paid by the sale of bank stock, and
making in the whole a reduction of nearly five millions and a half of
principal, and to have now in the Treasury $4,500,000, which are in a
course of application to the further discharge of debt and current
demands. Experience, too, so far, authorizes us to believe, if no
extraordinary event supervenes, and the expenses which will be actually
incurred shall not be greater than were contemplated by Congress
at their last session, that we shall not be disappointed in the
expectations then formed. But nevertheless, as the effect of peace
on the amount of duties is not yet fully ascertained, it is the more
necessary to practice every useful economy and to incur no expense which
may be avoided without prejudice.

The collection of the internal taxes having been completed in some of
the States, the officers employed in it are of course out of commission.
In others they will be so shortly. But in a few, where the arrangements
for the direct tax had been retarded, it will be some time before the
system is closed. It has not yet been thought necessary to employ the
agent authorized by an act of the last session for transacting business
in Europe relative to debts and loans. Nor have we used the power
confided by the same act of prolonging the foreign debt by reloans, and
of redeeming instead thereof an equal sum of the domestic debt. Should,
however, the difficulties of remittance on so large a scale render it
necessary at any time, the power shall be executed and the money thus
unemployed abroad shall, in conformity with that law, be faithfully
applied here in an equivalent extinction of domestic debt. When effects
so salutary result from the plans you have already sanctioned; when
merely by avoiding false objects of expense we are able, without a