as sufficient for our current expenses and to extinguish the public debt
within the period heretofore proposed.

The amount of debt paid for the same year is about $3,100,000, exclusive
of interest, and making, with the payment of the preceding year, a
discharge of more than $8,500,000 of the principal of that debt,
besides the accruing interest; and there remain in the Treasury nearly
$6,000,000. Of these, $880,000 have been reserved for payment of the
first installment due under the British convention of January 8, 1802,
and two millions are what have been before mentioned as placed by
Congress under the power and accountability of the President toward the
price of New Orleans and other territories acquired, which, remaining
untouched, are still applicable to that object and go in diminution of
the sum to be funded for it.

Should the acquisition of Louisiana be constitutionally confirmed and
carried into effect, a sum of nearly $13,000,000 will then be added to
our public debt, most of which is payable after fifteen years, before
which term the present existing debts will all be discharged by the
established operation of the sinking fund. When we contemplate the
ordinary annual augmentation of impost from increasing population and
wealth, the augmentation of the same revenue by its extension to the new
acquisition, and the economies which may still be introduced into our
public expenditures, I can not but hope that Congress in reviewing their
resources will find means to meet the intermediate interest of this
additional debt without recurring to new taxes, and applying to this
object only the ordinary progression of our revenue. Its extraordinary
increase in times of foreign war will be the proper and sufficient fund
for any measures of safety or precaution which that state of things may
render necessary in our neutral position.