_Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives_:

I now lay before Congress the annual account of the fund established
for defraying the contingent charges of Government. A single article of
$1,440, paid for bringing home 72 seamen discharged in foreign ports
from vessels sold abroad, is the only expenditure from that fund,
leaving an unexpended balance of $18,560 in the Treasury.

TH. JEFFERSON.



JANUARY 24. 1803.

_Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives_:

I transmit a report by the superintendent of the city of Washington on
the affairs of the city committed to his care. By this you will perceive
that the resales of lots prescribed by an act of the last session of
Congress did not produce a sufficiency to pay the debt to Maryland
to which they are appropriated, and as it was evident that the sums
necessary for the interest and installments due to that State could not
be produced by a sale of the other public lots without an unwarrantable
sacrifice of the property, the deficiencies were of necessity drawn from
the Treasury of the United States.

The office of the surveyor for the city, created during the former
establishment, being of indispensable necessity, it has been continued,
and to that of the superintendent, substituted instead of the board of
commissioners at the last session of Congress, no salary was annexed by