The enterprising spirit which has characterized our naval force, and its success, both in restraining insults and depredations on our coasts, and in reprisals on the enemy, will not fail to recommend an enlargement of it.
There being reason to believe that the act prohibiting the acceptance of British licenses is not a sufficient guard against the use of them for purposes favorable to the interests and views of the enemy, further provisions on that subject are highly important. Nor is it less so, that penal enactments should be provided for cases of corrupt and perfidious intercourse with the enemy, not amounting to treason, nor yet embraced by any statutory provisions.
A considerable number of American vessels which were in England when the revocation of the Orders in Council took place, were laden with British manufactures, under an erroneous impression that the non-importation act would immediately cease to operate, and have arrived in the United States. It did not appear proper to exercise, on unforeseen cases of such magnitude, the ordinary powers vested in the Treasury Department to mitigate forfeitures, without previously affording to Congress an opportunity of making on the subject such provisions as they may think proper. In their decision, they will doubtless equally consult what is due to equitable considerations and to the public interest.
The receipts into the Treasury during the year ending on the 30th of September last, have exceeded sixteen millions and a half of dollars; which have been sufficient to defray all the demands on the Treasury to that day, including a necessary reimbursement of near three millions of the principal of the public debt. In these receipts is included a sum of near five millions eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars, received on account of the loans authorized by the acts of the last session: the whole sum actually obtained on loan amounts to eleven millions of dollars, 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 vain glory; 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 sceptre 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. To have shrunk, under such circumstances, from manly resistance, would have been a degradation blasting our best and proudest hopes; it would have struck us from the high ranks where the virtuous struggles of our fathers had placed us, and have betrayed the magnificent legacy which we hold in trust for future generations. It would have acknowledged, that, on the element which forms three-fourths of the globe we inhabit, and where all independent nations have equal and common rights, the American people were not an independent people, but colonists and vassals. It was at this moment, and with such an alternative, that war was chosen. The nation felt the necessity of it, and called for it. The appeal was accordingly made, in a just cause, to the just and all-powerful Being who holds in his hand the chain of events, and the destiny of nations. It remains only, that, faithful to ourselves, entangled in no connections with the views of other powers, and ever ready to accept peace from the hand of justice, we prosecute the war with united counsels and with the ample faculties of the nation, until peace be so obtained, and as the only means, under the Divine blessing, of speedily obtaining it.
JAMES MADISON.
Washington, November 4, 1812.
The Message and documents were read, and twelve hundred and fifty copies ordered to be printed for the use of the Senate.