affections of the people, has gained and is daily gaining strength.
Local jealousies are rapidly yielding to more generous, enlarged, and
enlightened views of national policy. For advantages so numerous and
highly important it is our duty to unite in grateful acknowledgments
to that Omnipotent Being from whom they are derived, and in unceasing
prayer that He will endow us with virtue and strength to maintain and
hand them down in their utmost purity to our latest posterity.

I have the satisfaction to inform you that an arrangement which had
been commenced by my predecessor with the British Government for the
reduction of the naval force by Great Britain and the United States on
the Lakes has been concluded, by which it is provided that neither party
shall keep in service on Lake Champlain more than one vessel, on Lake
Ontario more than one, and on Lake Erie and the upper lakes more than
two, to be armed each with one cannon only, and that all the other armed
vessels of both parties, of which an exact list is interchanged, shall
be dismantled. It is also agreed that the force retained shall be
restricted in its duty to the internal purposes of each party, and
that the arrangement shall remain in force until six months shall have
expired after notice given by one of the parties to the other of its
desire that it should terminate. By this arrangement useless expense
on both sides and, what is of still greater importance, the danger of
collision between armed vessels in those inland waters, which was great,
is prevented.

I have the satisfaction also to state that the commissioners under the
fourth article of the treaty of Ghent, to whom it was referred to decide
to which party the several islands in the bay of Passamaquoddy belonged
under the treaty of 1783, have agreed in a report, by which all the
islands in the possession of each party before the late war have been