In these receipts is included a sum of near $5,850,000,
received on account of the loans authorized by the acts of the last
session; the whole sum actually obtained on loan amounts to $11,000,000,
the residue of which, being receivable subsequent to the 30th of
September last, will, together with the current revenue, enable us to
defray all the expenses of this year.
The duties on the late unexpected importations of British manufactures
will render the revenue of the ensuing year more productive than could
have been anticipated.
The situation of our country, fellow-citizens, is not without its
difficulties, though it abounds in animating considerations, of which
the view here presented of our pecuniary resources is an example. With
more than one nation we have serious and unsettled controversies, and
with one, powerful in the means and habits of war, we are at war. The
spirit and strength of the nation are nevertheless equal to the support
of all its rights, and to carry it through all its trials. They can be
met in that confidence. Above all, we have the inestimable consolation
of knowing that the war in which we are actually engaged is a war
neither of ambition nor of vainglory; that it is waged not in violation
of the rights of others, but in the maintenance of our own; that it was
preceded by a patience without example under wrongs accumulating without
end, and that it was finally not declared until every hope of averting
it was extinguished by the transfer of the British scepter into new
hands clinging to former councils, and until declarations were
reiterated to the last hour, through the British envoy here, that
the hostile edicts against our commercial rights and our maritime
independence would not be revoked; nay, that they could not be revoked
without violating the obligations of Great Britain to other powers, as
well as to her own interests.
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