cease. Measures of a financial character, now having the sanction of legal enactment, shall be faithfully enforced until repealed by the legislative authority. But I owe it to myself to say that I regard existing enactments as unwise and impolitic, and in a high degree oppress

ive.

I shall promptly give sanction to any constitutional measure which, originating in Congress, shall have for its object the restoration of a sound circulating medium, so essentially necessary to give confidence in all the transactions of life, to secure to industry its just and adequate rewards, and to re-establish the public prosperity. In deciding upon the adaptation of any such measure to the end proposed, as well as its conformity to the constitution, I shall resort to the fathers of the great republican school, for advice and instruction, to be drawn from their sage views of our system of government, and the light of their ever-glorious example.

The institutions under which we live, my countrymen, secure each person in the perfect enjoyment of all his rights. The spectacle is exhibited to the world of a government deriving its power from the consent of the governed, and having imparted to it only so much power as is necessary for its successful operation. Those who are charged with its administration should carefully abstain from all attempts to enlarge the range of powers thus granted to the several departments of the government, other than by an appeal to the people for additional grants, lest by so doing they disturb that balance which the patriots and statesmen who framed the constitution designed to establish between the federal government and the states composing the Union.

The observance of these rules is enjoined upon us by that feeling of reverence and affection which finds a place in the heart of every patriot for the preservation of union and the blessings of union-for the good of our children and our children's children, through countless generations. An opposite course could not fail to generate factions, intent upon the gratification of their selfish ends; to give birth to local and sectional jealousies, and to ultimate either in breaking asunder the bonds of union, or

in building up a central system which would inevitably end in a bloody sceptre and an iron crown.

In conclusion, I beg you to be assured that I shall exert myself to carry the foregoing principles into practice during my administrat on of the government, and, confiding in the protecting care of an ever-watchful and overruling Providence, it shall be my first and highest duty to preserve unimpaired the free institutions under which we live, and transmit them to those who shall succeed me, in their full force and vigor.

TYLER'S FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE,

DECEMBER 6, 1841.

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate

and of the House of Representatives:

IN coming together, fellow-citizens, to enter again upon the discharge of the duties with which the people have charged us, severally, we find great occasion to rejoice in the general prosperity of the country. We are in the enjoyment of all the blessings of civil and religious liberty, with unexampled means of education, knowledge, and improvement. Through the year which is now drawing to a close, peace has been in our borders, and plenty in our habitations; and although disease has visited some few portions of the land with distress and mortality, yet in general the health of the people has been preserved, and we are all called upon, by the highest obligations of duty, to renew our thanks and our devotion to our Heavenly Parent, who has continued to vouchsafe to us the eminent blessings which surround us, and who has so signally crowned the year with His goodness. If we find ourselves increasing, beyond example, in numbers, in strength, in wealth, in knowledge, in everything which promotes human and social happiness, let us ever remember our dependance, for all these, on the protection and merciful dispensations of Divine Providence.

Since your last adjournment, Alexander McLeod, a British subject, who was indicted for the murder of an American citizen, and whose case has been the subject of a correspondence heretofore communicated to you, has been acquitted by the verdict of an impartial and intelligent jury, and has, under the judgment of the court, been regularly discharged.

Great Britain having made known to this government that the expedition, which was fitted out from Canada for the destruction of the steamboat Caroline in the winter of 1837, and which resulted in the destruction of said boat and in the death of an American citizen, was undertaken by orders emanating from the authorities of the British government, in Canada, and demanding the dis

charge of McLeod upon the ground that, if engaged in that expedition, he did but fulfil the orders of his government, has thus been answered in the only way in which she could be answered by a government, the powers of which are distributed among its several departments by the fundamental law. Happily for the people of Great Britain, as well as those of the United States, the only mode by which an individual, arraigned for a criminal offence, before the courts of either, can obtain his discharge, is by the independent action of the judiciary, and by proceedings equally familiar to the courts of both countries. If in Great Britain a power exists in the crown to cause to be entered a nolle prosequi, which is not the case with the executive power of the United States upon a prosecution pending in a state court; yet there, no more than here, can the chief executive power rescue a prisoner from custody without an order of the proper tribunal directing his discharge. The precise stage of the proceedings at which such order may be made, is a matter of municipal regulation exclusively, and not to be complained of by any other government. In cases of this kind, a government becomes politically responsible only when its tribunals of last resort are shown to have rendered unjust and injurious judgments in matters not doubtful. To the establishment and elucidation of this principle, no nation has lent its authority more efficiently than Great Britain. Alexander McLeod, having his option either to prosecute a writ of error from the decision of the Supreme Court of New York, which had been rendered upon his application for a discharge, to the Supreme Court of the United States, or to submit his case to the decision of a jury, preferred the latter, deeming it the readiest mode of obtaining his liberation; and the result has fully sustained the wisdom of his choice. The manner in which the issue submitted was tried, will satisfy the English government that the principle of justice will never fail to govern the enlightened decision of an American tribunal. I cannot fail, however, to suggest to Congress the propriety, and, in some degree, the necessity, of making such provisions by law, so far as they may constitutionally do so, for the removal at their commencement,

and at the option of the party, of all such cases as may hereafter arise, and which may involve the faithful observance and execution of our international obligations, from the State to the Federal Judiciary. This government, by our institutions, is charged with the maintenance of peace and the preservation of amicable relations with the nations of the earth, and ought to possess, without question, all the reasonable and proper means of maintaining the one and preserving the other. Whilst just confidence is felt in the judiciary of the states, yet this government ought to be competent in itself for the fulfilment of the high duties which have been devolved upon it under the organic law, by the states themselves.

In the month of September, a party of armed men from Upper Canada, invaded the territory of the United States, and forcibly seized upon the person of one Grogan, and, under circumstances of great harshness, hurriedly carried him beyond the limits of the United States, and delivered him up to the authorities of Lower Canada. His immediate discharge was ordered by those authorities, upon the facts of the case being brought to their knowleage,-a course of procedure which was to have been expected from a nation with whom we are at peace, and which was not more due to the rights of the United States, than to its own regard to justice. The correspondence which passed between the Department of State and the British Envoy, Mr. Fox, and with the governor of Vermont, as soon as the facts had been made known to this Department, are herewith communicated.

I regret that it is not in my power to make known to you an equally satisfactory conclusion in the case of the Caroline steamer; with the circumstances connected with the destruction of which, in December, 1837, by an armed force fitted out in the province of Upper Canada, you are already made acquainted. No such atonement as was due for the public wrong done to the United States by this invasion of her territory, so wholly irreconcilable with her rights as an independent power, has yet been made. In the view taken by this government, the inquiry whether the vessel was in the employment of those who were prosecuting an unauthorized war against that