of the public revenue and the remainder derived from loans. The disbursements for public expenditures during the same period exceeded $34,000,000, and left in the Treasury on the 1st day of July near $5,000,000. The demands during the remainder of the present year already authorized by Congress and the expenses incident to an extension of the operations of the war will render it necessary that large sums should be provided to meet them.

From this view of the national affairs Congress will be urged to take up without delay as well the subject of pecuniary supplies as that of military force, and on a scale commensurate with the extent and the character which the war has assumed. It is not to be disguised that the situation of our country calls for its greatest efforts. Our enemy is powerful in men and in money, on the land and on the water. Availing himself of fortuitous advantages, he is aiming with his undivided force a deadly blow at our growing prosperity, perhaps at our national existence. He has avowed his purpose of trampling on the usages of civilized warfare, and given earnest of it in the plunder and wanton destruction of private property. In his pride of maritime dominion and in his thirst of commercial monopoly he strikes with peculiar animosity at the progress of our navigation and of our manufactures. His barbarous policy has not even spared those monuments of the arts and models of taste with which our country had enriched and embellished its infant metropolis. From such an adversary hostility in its greatest force and in its worst forms may be looked for. The American people will face it with the undaunted spirit which in their revolutionary struggle defeated his unrighteous projects. His threats and his barbarities, instead of dismay, will kindle in every bosom an indignation not to be extinguished but in the disaster and expulsion of such cruel invaders. In providing the means necessary the National Legislature will not distrust the heroic and enlightened patriotism of its constituents. They will cheerfully and proudly bear every

burden of every kind which the safety and honor of the nation demand. We have seen them everywhere paying their taxes, direct and indirect, with the greatest promptness and alacrity. We see them rushing with enthusiasm to the scenes where danger and duty call. In offering their blood they give the surest pledge that no other tribute will be withheld.

Having forborne to declare war until to other aggressions had been added the capture of nearly a thousand American vessels and the impressment of thousands of American seafaring citizens, and until a final declaration had been made by the Government of Great Britain that her hostile orders against our commerce would not be revoked but on conditions as impossible as unjust, whilst it was known that these orders would not otherwise cease but with a war which had lasted nearly twenty years, and which, according to appearances at that time, might last as many more; having manifested on every occasion and in every proper mode a sincere desire to arrest the effusion of blood and meet our enemy on the ground of justice and reconciliation, our beloved country, in still opposing to his persevering hostility all its energies, with an undiminished disposition toward peace and friendship on honorable terms, must carry with it the good wishes of the impartial world and the best hopes of support from an omnipotent and kind Providence.

TO DANIEL D. TOMPKINS.1

MAD. MSS. Sep 28, 1814.

DR SIR, Mr. Monroe having just been appointed Secy of War it is necessary to provide for the vacancy resulting in the Dept of State. Wishing to avail the U. S. of y talents & services, I take the liberty of

'Tompkins was at that time Governor of New York. Upon Armstrong's dismissal Monroe became Secretary of War ad interim from August 30th to September 30th. He was nominated for the office

requesting permission to name you to the Senate as his successor. I am aware of the very important station, from which their concurrence will withdraw you; but I justify my personal wish to see you a member of the Ex. family, by my persuasion, that the one contemplated will afford still greater scope for the benefits wch you have given so many proofs of your disposition to render to our Country. I need not suggest that as early an answer as you can make convenient will be acceptable

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

MAD. MSS:

WASHINGTON, Oct 10, 1814

DEAR SIR Your favor of the 24th Ult: came duly to hand. I learn that the Library Com will report favorably on your proposition to supply the loss of books by Cong It will prove a gain to them, if they have the wisdom to replace it by such a Collection as yours. Mr. Smith will doubtless write you on the subject.1

I have not yet read your last communication to Mr. Monroe on the subject of finance.2 It seems

of Secretary of War September 26th, confirmed September 27th, qualified October 1st, 1814, and served to February 28th, 1815, when he was again commissioned Secretary of State. Mosher's Executive Register of the United States, 83, 84. Tompkins declined on the ground that he was more useful in his present situation. Madison to Tompkins, October 18, 1814.-Mad. MSS.

The library was bought for $23,950 by act of January 30, 1815.— History of the Library of Congress, i., 68, et seq.

2 September 24th. See also his letter of October 15th (Writings, 14,488, 489), to which Madison replied October 23d: "I find that the variance in our ideas relates 1. to the probable quantity of circu

clear, according to your reasoning in the preceding one, that a circulating medium, to take the place of a bank or metallic medium, may be created by law and made to answer the purpose of a loan, or rather anticipation of a tax; but as the resource cannot be extended beyond the amount of a sufficient medium, and of course cannot be continued but by successive re-emissions & redemptions by taxes, resort must eventually be had to loans of the usual sort, or an augmentation of taxes, according to the public exi

lating medium. 2 to the effect of an annual augmentation of it. I cannot persuade myself that in the present stagnation of private dealings, & the proposed limitation of taxes, the two great absorbents of money, the circulating sum would amount even to 20 mill! But be this amount what it may, every emission beyond it, must either enter into circulation and depreciate the whole mass; or it must be locked up. If it bear an interest it may be locked up for the sake of the interest, in which case it is a loan, both in substance & in form, and implies a capacity to lend, in other words a disposable capital, in the Country. If it does not bear an interest, it could not be locked up, but on the supposition that the terms on which it is recḍ are such as to promise indemnity at least for the intermediate loss of interest, by its value at a future day; but this both involves the substance of a loan, to the amount of the value locked up, and implies a depreciation differing only from the career of the old continental currency, by a gradual return from a certain point of depression to its original level. If this view of the subject be in any measure correct, I am aware of the gloomy inferences from it. I trust however that our case is not altogether without remedy. To a certain extent paper in some form or other, will as a circulating medium, answer the purpose your plan contemplates. The increase of taxes will have the double operation of widening the channel of circulation, and of pumping the medium out of it. And I cannot but think that a domestic capital existing under various shapes, and disposable to the public, may still be obtained on terms tho' hard, not intolerable; and that it will not be very long before the money market abroad, will not be entirely shut agst us; a market however ineligible in some respects, not to be declined under our circumstances."-Mad. MSS.

gencies: I say augmentations of taxes, because these absorbing a larger sum into circulation, will admit an enlargement of the medium employed for the purpose. In England where the paper medium, is a legal tender in paying a hundred millions of taxes, thirty millions of interest to the public creditors &c &c, and in private debts, so as to stay a final recovery, we have seen what a mass of paper has been kept afloat, with little if any depreciation. That the difference in value between the circulating notes and the metals proceeded rather from the rise in the latter than from the depreciation of the former, is now proved by the fact, that the notes are, notwithstanding a late increase of their quantity, rising towards a par with the metals, in consequence of a favorable balance of trade which diminishes the demand of them for foreign markets.

We have just received despatches from Ghent, which I shall lay before Cong to-day. The British sine qua non, excluded us from fishing within the sovereignty attached to her shores, and from using these in curing fish; required a Cession of as much of Maine as wd remove the obstruction to a direct communication between Quebec & Halifax, confirmed to her the Passamaquoddy Islands as always hers of right; included in the pacification the Indian Allies, with a boundary for them (such as that of the Treaty of Greenville) agst the U. S. mutually guarantied, and the Indians restrained from selling their

1 See State Papers, vol. iii., Foreign Relations, p. 695.