of the Constitution as will define its character and prescribe its bounds.  If the States feel themselves competent to these objects, why should this Government wish to assume the power?  If they do not, then they will not hesitate to make the grant.  Both Governments are the Governments of the people; improvements must be made with the money of the people, and if the money can be collected and applied by those more simple and economical political machines, the State governments, it will unquestionably be safer and better for the people than to add to the splendor, the patronage, and the power of the General Government.  But if the people of the several States think otherwise they will amend the Constitution, and in their decision all ought cheerfully to acquiesce.

For a detailed and highly satisfactory view of the operations of the War Department I refer you to the accompanying report of the Secretary of War.

The hostile incursions of the Sac and Fox Indians necessarily led to the interposition of the Government.  A portion of the troops, under Generals Scott and Atkinson, and of the militia of the State of Illinois were called into the field.  After a harassing warfare, prolonged by the nature of the country and by the difficulty of procuring subsistence, the Indians were entirely defeated, and the disaffected band dispersed or destroyed.  The result has been creditable to the troops engaged in the service.  Severe as is the lesson to the Indians, it was rendered necessary by their unprovoked aggressions, and it is to be hoped that its impression will be permanent and salutary.

This campaign has evinced the efficient organization of the Army and its capacity for prompt and active service.  Its several departments have performed their functions with energy and dispatch, and the general movement was satisfactory.

Our fellow-citizens upon the frontiers were ready, as they always are, in the tender of their services in the hour of danger.  But a more efficient organization of our militia system is essential to that security which is one of the principal objects of all governments.  Neither our situation nor our institutions require or permit the maintenance of a large regular force.  History offers too many lessons of the fatal result of such a measure not to warn us against its adoption here.  The expense which attends it, the obvious tendency to employ it because it exists and thus to engage in unnecessary wars, and its ultimate danger to public liberty will lead us, I trust, to place our principal dependence for protection upon the great body of the citizens of the Republic.  If in asserting rights or in repelling wrongs war should come upon us, our regular force should be increased to an extent proportioned to the emergency, and our present small Army is a nucleus around which such force could be formed and embodied.  But for the purposes of defense under ordinary circumstances we must rely upon the electors of the country.  Those by whom and for whom the Government was instituted and is supported will constitute its protection in the hour of danger as they do its check in the hour of safety.