While the present salary of $2,000 a year appears adequate to the consulates of Tunis and Tripoli, twice that sum probably will be requisite for Algiers.
JOHN ADAMS.
UNITED STATES, July 3, 1797.
Gentlemen of the Senate and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives:
The whole of the intelligence which has for some time past been received from abroad, the correspondences between this Government and the ministers of the belligerent powers residing here, and the advices from the officers of the United States, civil and military, upon the frontiers all conspire to shew in a very strong light the critical situation of our country. That Congress might be enabled to form a more perfect judgment of it and of the measures necessary to be taken, I have directed the proper officers to prepare such collections of extracts from the public correspondences as might afford the clearest information. The reports made to me from the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War, with a collection of documents from each of them, are now communicated to both Houses of Congress. I have desired that the message, reports, and documents may be considered as confidential merely that the members of both Houses of Congress may be apprised of their contents before they should be made public. As soon as the two Houses shall have heard them, I shall submit to their discretion the publication of the whole, or any such parts of them as they shall judge necessary or expedient for the public good.
JOHN ADAMS.
PROCLAMATION.
BY JOHN ADAMS, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
A PROCLAMATION.
Whereas an act of the Congress of the United States was passed on the 9th day of February, 1793, entitled "An act regulating foreign coins, and for other purposes," in which it was enacted "that foreign gold and silver coins shall pass current as money within the United States and be a legal tender for the payment of all debts and demands" at the several and respective rates therein stated; and that "at the expiration of three years next ensuing the time when the coinage of gold and silver agreeably to the act intituled "An act establishing a mint and regulating the coins of the United States" shall commence at the Mint of the United States (which time shall be announced by the proclamation of the President of the United States), all foreign gold coins and all foreign silver coins, except Spanish milled dollars and parts of such dollars, shall cease to be a legal tender as aforesaid: