upon sectional interests, and to a corresponding multiplication of
candidates for the Presidency, the tendency of the constitutional
reference to the House of Representatives is to devolve the election
upon that body in almost every instance, and, what ever choice may then
be made among the candidates thus presented to them, to swell the
influence of particular interests to a degree inconsistent with the
general good. The consequences of this feature of the Constitution
appear far more threatening to the peace and integrity of the Union
than any which I can conceive as likely to result from the simple
legislative action of the Federal Government.
It was a leading object with the framers of the Constitution to keep as
separate as possible the action of the legislative and executive
branches of the Government. To secure this object nothing is more
essential than to preserve the former from all temptations of private
interest, and therefore so to direct the patronage of the latter as not
to permit such temptations to be offered. Experience abundantly
demonstrates that every precaution in this respect is a valuable
safe-guard of liberty, and one which my reflections upon the tendencies
of our system incline me to think should be made still stronger.
It was for this reason that, in connection with an amendment of the
Constitution removing all intermediate agency in the choice of the
President, I recommended some restrictions upon the re-eligibility of
that officer and upon the tenure of offices generally. The reason still
exists, and I renew the recommendation with an increased confidence
that its adoption will strengthen those checks by which the
Constitution designed to secure the independence of each department of
the Government and promote the healthful and equitable administration
of all the trusts which it has created.
The agent most likely to contravene this design of the Constitution is
the Chief Magistrate. In order, particularly, that his appointment may
as far as possible be placed beyond the reach of any improper
influences; in order that he may approach the solemn responsibilities
of the highest office in the gift of a free people uncommitted to any
other course than the strict line of constitutional duty, and that the
securities for this independence may be rendered as strong as the
nature of power and the weakness of its possessor will admit, I can not
too earnestly invite your attention to the propriety of promoting such
an amendment of the Constitution as will render him ineligible after
one term of service.
It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy
of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly 30 years, in relation to
the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching
to a happy consummation. Two important tribes have accepted the
provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and
it is believed that their example will induce the remaining tribes also
to seek the same obvious advantages.
The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United
States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves. The
pecuniary advantages which it promises to the Government are the least
of its recommendations. It puts an end to all possible danger of
collision between the authorities of the General and State Governments
on account of the Indians. It will place a dense and civilized
population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage
hunters. By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north
and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites it will
incalculably strengthen the south west frontier and render the adjacent
States strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid. It
will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of
Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those States to advance rapidly
in population, wealth, and power. It will separate the Indians from
immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power
of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and
under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay,
which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually,
under the protection of the Government and through the influence of
good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an
interesting, civilized, and Christian community. These consequences,
some of them so certain and the rest so probable, make the complete
execution of the plan sanctioned by Congress at their last session an
object of much solicitude.
Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly
feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them
from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people. I
have endeavored to impress upon them my own solemn convictions of the
duties and powers of the General Government in relation to the State
authorities. For the justice of the laws passed by the States within
the scope of their reserved powers they are not responsible to this
Government. As individuals we may entertain and express our opinions of
their acts, but as a Government we have as little right to control them
as we have to prescribe laws for other nations.
With a full understanding of the subject, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw
tribes have with great unanimity determined to avail themselves of the
liberal offers presented by the act of Congress, and have agreed to
remove beyond the Mississippi River. Treaties have been made with them,
which in due season will be submitted for consideration. In negotiating
these treaties they were made to understand their true condition, and
they have preferred maintaining their independence in the Western
forests to submitting to the laws of the States in which they now
reside. These treaties, being probably the last which will ever be made
with them, are characterized by great liberality on the part of the
Government. They give the Indians a liberal sum in consideration of
their removal, and comfortable subsistence on their arrival at their
new homes. If it be their real interest to maintain a separate
existence, they will there be at liberty to do so without the
inconveniences and vexations to which they would unavoidably have been
subject in Alabama and Mississippi.
Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this
country, and Philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising
means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been
arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the
earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the
graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true
philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to
the extinction of one generation to make room for another. In the
monuments and fortifications of an unknown people, spread over the
extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once
powerful race, which was exterminated of has disappeared to make room
for the existing savage tribes. Nor is there any thing in this which,
upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race,
is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent
restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers.
What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by
a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities,
towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements
which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than
12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty,
civilization, and religion?
The present policy of the Government is but a continuation of the same
progressive change by a milder process. The tribes which occupied the
countries now constituting the Eastern States were annihilated or have
melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and
civilization are rolling to the westward, and we now propose to acquire
the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair
exchange, and, at the expense of the United States, to send them to a
land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual.
Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers; but
what do they more than our ancestors did or than our children are now
doing? To better their condition in an unknown land our forefathers
left all that was dear in earthly objects. Our children by thousands
yearly leave the land of their birth to seek new homes in distant
regions. Does Humanity weep at these painful separations from every
thing, animate and inanimate, with which the young heart has become
entwined? Far from it. It is rather a source of joy that our country
affords scope where our young population may range unconstrained in
body or in mind, developing the power and faculties of man in their
highest perfection.
These remove hundreds and almost thousands of miles at their own
expense, purchase the lands they occupy, and support themselves at
their new homes from the moment of their arrival. Can it be cruel in
this Government when, by events which it can not control, the Indian is
made discontented in his ancient home to purchase his lands, to give
him a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of his removal,
and support him a year in his new abode? How many thousands of our own
people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on
such conditions! If the offers made to the Indians were extended to
them, they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.
And is it supposed that the wandering savage has a stronger attachment
to his home than the settled, civilized Christian? Is it more
afflicting to him to leave the graves of his fathers than it is to our
brothers and children? Rightly considered, the policy of the General
Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous. He is
unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their
population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter
annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and
proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.
In the consummation of a policy originating at an early period, and
steadily pursued by every Administration within the present century--so
just to the States and so generous to the Indians--the Executive feels
it has a right to expect the cooperation of Congress and of all good
and disinterested men. The States, moreover, have a right to demand it.
It was substantially a part of the compact which made them members of
our Confederacy. With Georgia there is an express contract; with the
new States an implied one of equal obligation. Why, in authorizing
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, and Alabama to form
constitutions and become separate States, did Congress include within
their limits extensive tracts of Indian lands, and, in some instances,
powerful Indian tribes? Was it not understood by both parties that the
power of the States was to be coextensive with their limits, and that
with all convenient dispatch the General Government should extinguish
the Indian title and remove every obstruction to the complete
jurisdiction of the State governments over the soil? Probably not one
of those States would have accepted a separate existence--certainly it
would never have been granted by Congress--had it been understood that
they were to be confined for ever to those small portions of their
nominal territory the Indian title to which had at the time been
extinguished.
It is, therefore, a duty which this Government owes to the new States
to extinguish as soon as possible the Indian title to all lands which
Congress themselves have included within their limits. When this is
done the duties of the General Government in relation to the States and
the Indians within their limits are at an end. The Indians may leave
the State or not, as they choose. The purchase of their lands does not
alter in the least their personal relations with the State government.
No act of the General Government has ever been deemed necessary to give
the States jurisdiction over the persons of the Indians. That they
possess by virtue of their sovereign power within their own limits in
as full a manner before as after the purchase of the Indian lands; nor
can this Government add to or diminish it.
May we not hope, therefore, that all good citizens, and none more
zealously than those who think the Indians oppressed by subjection to
the laws of the States, will unite in attempting to open the eyes of
those children of the forest to their true condition, and by a speedy
removal to relieve them from all the evils, real or imaginary, present
or prospective, with which they may be supposed to be threatened.
Among the numerous causes of congratulation the condition of our impost
revenue deserves special mention, in as much as it promises the means
of extinguishing the public debt sooner than was anticipated, and
furnishes a strong illustration of the practical effects of the present
tariff upon our commercial interests.
The object of the tariff is objected to by some as unconstitutional,
and it is considered by almost all as defective in many of its parts.
The power to impose duties on imports originally belonged to the
several States. The right to adjust those duties with a view to the
encouragement of domestic branches of industry is so completely
incidental to that power that it is difficult to suppose the existence
of the one without the other. The States have delegated their whole
authority over imports to the General Government without limitation or
restriction, saving the very inconsiderable reservation relating to
their inspection laws. This authority having thus entirely passed from
the States, the right to exercise it for the purpose of protection does
not exist in them, and consequently if it be not possessed by the
General Government it must be extinct. Our political system would thus
present the anomaly of a people stripped of the right to foster their
own industry and to counteract the most selfish and destructive policy
which might be adopted by foreign nations. This sure can not be the
case. This indispensable power thus surrendered by the States must be
within the scope of the authority on the subject expressly delegated to
Congress.
In this conclusion I am confirmed as well by the opinions of Presidents
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, who have each repeatedly
recommended the exercise of this right under the Constitution, as by
the uniform practice of Congress, the continued acquiescence of the
States, and the general understanding of the people.
The difficulties of a more expedient adjustment of the present tariff,
although great, are far from being insurmountable. Some are unwilling
to improve any of its parts because they would destroy the whole;
others fear to touch the objectionable parts lest those they approve
should be jeoparded. I am persuaded that the advocates of these
conflicting views do injustice to the American people and to their
representatives. The general interest is the interest of each, and my
confidence is entire that to insure the adoption of such modifications
of the tariff as the general interest requires it is only necessary
that that interest should be understood.
It is an infirmity of our nature to mingle our interests and prejudices
with the operation of our reasoning powers, and attribute to the
objects of our likes and dislikes qualities they do not possess and
effects they can not produce. The effects of the present tariff are
doubtless over-rated, both in its evils and in its advantages. By one
class of reasoners the reduced price of cotton and other agricultural
products is ascribed wholly to its influence, and by another the
reduced price of manufactured articles.
The probability is that neither opinion approaches the truth, and that
both are induced by that influence of interests and prejudices to which
I have referred. The decrease of prices extends throughout the
commercial world, embracing not only the raw material and the
manufactured article, but provisions and lands. The cause must
therefore be deeper and more pervading than the tariff of the United
States. It may in a measure be attributable to the increased value of
the precious metals, produced by a diminution of the supply and an
increase in the demand, while commerce has rapidly extended itself and
population has augmented. The supply of gold and silver, the general
medium of exchange, has been greatly interrupted by civil convulsions
in the countries from which they are principally drawn. A part of the
effect, too, is doubtless owing to an increase of operatives and
improvements in machinery. But on the whole it is questionable whether
the reduction in the price of lands, produce, and manufactures has been
greater than the appreciation of the standard of value.
While the chief object of duties should be revenue, they may be so
adjusted as to encourage manufactures. In this adjustment, however, it
is the duty of the Government to be guided by the general good. Objects
of national importance alone ought to be protected. Of these the
productions of our soil, our mines, and our work shops, essential to
national defense, occupy the first rank. What ever other species of
domestic industry, having the importance to which I have referred, may
be expected, after temporary protection, to compete with foreign labor
on equal terms merit the same attention in a subordinate degree.
The present tariff taxes some of the comforts of life unnecessarily
high; it undertakes to protect interests too local and minute to
justify a general exaction, and it also attempts to force some kinds of
manufactures for which the country is not ripe. Much relief will be
derived in some of these respects from the measures of your last
session.
The best as well as fairest mode of determining whether from any just
considerations a particular interest ought to receive protection would
be to submit the question singly for deliberation. If after
due examination of its merits, unconnected with extraneous
considerations--such as a desire to sustain a general system or to
purchase support for a different interest--it should enlist in its
favor a majority of the representatives of the people, there can be
little danger of wrong or injury in adjusting the tariff with reference
to its protective effect. If this obviously just principle were
honestly adhered to, the branches of industry which deserve protection
would be saved from the prejudice excited against them when that
protection forms part of a system by which portions of the country feel
or conceive themselves to be oppressed. What is incalculably more
important, the vital principle of our system--that principle which
requires acquiescence in the will of the majority--would be secure from
the discredit and danger to which it is exposed by the acts of
majorities founded not on identity of conviction, but on combinations
of small minorities entered into for the purpose of mutual assistance
in measures which, resting solely on their own merits, could never be
carried.
I am well aware that this is a subject of so much delicacy, on account
of the extended interests in involves, as to require that it should be
touched with the utmost caution, and that while an abandonment of the
policy in which it originated--a policy coeval with our Government, and
pursued through successive Administrations--is neither to be expected
or desired, the people have a right to demand, and have demanded, that
it be so modified as to correct abuses and obviate injustice.
That our deliberations on this interesting subject should be
uninfluenced by those partisan conflicts that are incident to free
institutions is the fervent wish of my heart. To make this great
question, which unhappily so much divides and excites the public mind,
subservient to the short-sighted views of faction, must destroy all
hope of settling it satisfactorily to the great body of the people and
for the general interest. I can not, therefore, in taking leave of the
subject, too earnestly for my own feelings or the common good warn you
against the blighting consequences of such a course.
According to the estimates at the Treasury Department, the receipts in
the Treasury during the present year will amount to $24,161,018, which
will exceed by about $300,000 the estimate presented in the last annual
report of the Secretary of the Treasury. The total expenditure during
the year, exclusive of public debt, is estimated at $13,742,311, and
the payment on account of public debt for the same period will have
been $11,354,630, leaving a balance in the Treasury on January 1st,
1831 of $4,819,781.
In connection with the condition of our finances, it affords me
pleasure to remark that judicious and efficient arrangements have been
made by the Treasury Department for securing the pecuniary
responsibility of the public officers and the more punctual payment of
the public dues. The Revenue Cutter Service has been organized and
placed on a good footing, and aided by an increase of inspectors at
exposed points, and regulations adopted under the act of May, 1830, for
the inspection and appraisement of merchandise, has produced much
improvement in the execution of the laws and more security against the
commission of frauds upon the revenue. Abuses in the allowances for
fishing bounties have also been corrected, and a material saving in
that branch of the service thereby effected. In addition to these
improvements the system of expenditure for sick sea men belonging to
the merchant service has been revised, and being rendered uniform and
economical the benefits of the fund applicable to this object have been
usefully extended.
The prosperity of our country is also further evinced by the increased
revenue arising from the sale of public lands, as will appear from the
report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office and the documents
accompanying it, which are herewith transmitted. I beg leave to draw
your attention to this report, and to the propriety of making early
appropriations for the objects which it specifies.
Your attention is again invited to the subjects connected with that
portion of the public interests intrusted to the War Department. Some
of them were referred to in my former message, and they are presented
in detail in the report of the Secretary of War herewith submitted. I
refer you also to the report of that officer for a knowledge of the
state of the Army, fortifications, arsenals, and Indian affairs, all of
which it will be perceived have been guarded with zealous attention and
care. It is worthy of your consideration whether the armaments
necessary for the fortifications on our maritime frontier which are now
or shortly will be completed should not be in readiness sooner than the
customary appropriations will enable the Department to provide them.
This precaution seems to be due to the general system of fortification
which has been sanctioned by Congress, and is recommended by that maxim
of wisdom which tells us in peace to prepare for war.