Our demands upon the Government of the Two Sicilies are of a peculiar nature.  The injuries on which they are founded are not denied, nor are the atrocity and perfidy under which those injuries were perpetrated attempted to be extenuated.  The sole ground on which indemnity has been refused is the alleged illegality of the tenure by which the monarch who made the seizures held his crown.  This defense, always unfounded in any principle of the law of nations, now universally abandoned, even by those powers upon whom the responsibility for acts of past rulers bore the most heavily, will unquestionably be given up by His Sicilian Majesty, whose counsels will receive an impulse from that high sense of honor and regard to justice which are said to characterize him; and I feel the fullest confidence that the talents of the citizen commissioned for that purpose will place before him the just claims of our injured citizens in such a light as will enable me before your adjournment to announce that they have been adjusted and secured.  Precise instructions to the effect of bringing the negotiation to a speedy issue have been given, and will be obeyed.

In the late blockade of Terceira some of the Portuguese fleet captured several of our vessels and committed other excesses, for which reparation was demanded, and I was on the point of dispatching an armed force to prevent any recurrence of a similar violence and protect our citizens in the prosecution of their lawful commerce when official assurances, on which I relied, made the sailing of the ships unnecessary.  Since that period frequent promises have been made that full indemnity shall be given for the injuries inflicted and the losses sustained.  In the performance there has been some, perhaps unavoidable, delay; but I have the fullest confidence that my earnest desire that this business may at once be closed, which our minister has been instructed strongly to express, will very soon be gratified.  I have the better ground for this hope from the evidence of a friendly disposition which that Government has shown by an actual reduction in the duty on rice the produce of our Southern States, authorizing the anticipation that this important article of our export will soon be admitted on the same footing with that produced by the most favored nation.

With the other powers of Europe we have fortunately had no cause of discussions for the redress of injuries.  With the Empire of the Russias our political connection is of the most friendly and our commercial of the most liberal kind.  We enjoy the advantages of navigation and trade given to the most favored nation, but it has not yet suited their policy, or perhaps has not been found convenient from other considerations, to give stability and reciprocity to those privileges by a commercial treaty.  The ill health of the minister last year charged with making a proposition for that arrangement did not permit him to remain at St. Petersburg, and the attention of that Government during the whole of the period since his departure having been occupied by the war in which it was engaged, we have been assured that nothing could have been effected by his presence.  A minister will soon be nominated, as well to effect this important object as to keep up the relations of amity and good understanding of which we have received so many assurances and proofs from His Imperial Majesty and the Emperor his predecessor.