As a just and equitable conclusion of our depending negotiations with Spain will essentially advance the interest of both nations, and thereby cherish and confirm the good understanding and friendship which we have at all times desired to maintain, it will afford us real pleasure to receive an early confirmation of our expectations on this subject.
The interesting prospect of our affairs, with regard to the foreign powers between whom and the United States controversies have subsisted, is not more satisfactory than the review of our internal situation: if from the former we derive an expectation of the extinguishment of all the causes of external discord that have heretofore endangered our tranquillity, and on terms consistent with our national honor and safety, in the latter we discover those numerous and wide-spread tokens of prosperity which, in so peculiar a manner, distinguish our happy country.
Circumstances thus every way auspicious demand our gratitude, and sincere acknowledgments to Almighty God, and require that we should unite our efforts in imitation of your enlightened, firm, and persevering example, to establish and preserve the peace, freedom, and prosperity of our country.
The objects which you have recommended to the notice of the Legislature will, in the course of the session, receive our careful attention, and, with a true zeal for the public welfare, we shall cheerfully co-operate in every measure that shall appear to us best calculated to promote the same.
JOHN ADAMS,
Vice President of the United States,
and President of the Senate.
The Address was taken up by paragraphs.
The fourth and fifth paragraphs were moved to be struck out by Mr. Mason.[60]
Mr. Mason observed, that he had hoped nothing contained in the Address reported as an answer to the President's Speech, would have been such as to force the Senate to precipitate decisions. The two clauses he objected to disappointed him in that hope. They were calculated to bring again into view the important subject which occupied the Senate during their June session. This he conceived could answer no good purpose; the minority on that occasion were not now to be expected to recede from the opinions they then held, and they could not therefore join in the indirect self-approbation which the majority appeared to wish for, and which was most certainly involved in the two clauses which he should hope would be struck out. If his motion were agreed to, the remainder of the Address would, in his opinion, stand unexceptionable. He did not see, for his part, that our situation was every way auspicious. Notwithstanding the treaty, our trade is grievously molested.
Mr. King observed, that the principal features observable in the answer reported to the President's Address, were to keep up that harmony of intercourse which ought to subsist between the Legislature and the President, and to express confidence in the undiminished firmness and love of country which always characterize our chief Executive Magistrate. He objected to striking out especially the first clause, because founded on undeniable truth. It only declares that our prospects, as to our external relations, are not more satisfactory than a review of our internal situation would prove. Was not this representation true, he asked; could it be controverted? This clause, he contended, contained nothing reasonably objectionable; it did not say as much as the second, to which only most of the objections of the member up before him applied, an answer to which he should defer, expecting that a question would be put on each in order.
The Chair requested that the motion should be reduced to writing. Mr. Mason accordingly reduced it to writing, and it went to striking out both clauses at once.