The receipts of the present year have amounted to near two millions more than was anticipated at the commencement of the last session of Congress.

The amount of duties secured on importations from the 1st of January to the 30th of September was about $22,997,000, and that of the estimated accruing revenue is five millions, forming an aggregate for the year of near twenty-eight millions.  This is one million more than the estimate made last December for the accruing revenue of the present year, which, with allowances for drawbacks and contingent deficiencies, was expected to produce an actual revenue of $22,300,000.  Had these only been realized the expenditures of the year would have been also proportionally reduced, for of these twenty-four millions received upward of nine millions have been applied to the extinction of public debt, bearing an interest of 6 per cent a year, and of course reducing the burden of interest annually payable in future by the amount of more than half a million.  The payments on account of interest during the current year exceed $3,000,000, presenting an aggregate of more than twelve millions applied during the year to the discharge of the public debt, the whole of which remaining due on the 1st of January next will amount only to $58,362,135.78.

That the revenue of the ensuing year will not fall short of that received in the one now expiring there are indications which can scarcely prove deceptive.  In our country an uniform experience of forty years has shown that whatever the tariff of duties upon articles imported from abroad has been, the amount of importations has always borne an average value nearly approaching to that of the exports, though occasionally differing in the balance, sometimes being more and sometimes less.  It is, indeed, a general law of prosperous commerce that the real value of exports should by a small, and only a small, balance exceed that of imports, that balance being a permanent addition to the wealth of the nation.  The extent of the prosperous commerce of the nation must be regulated by the amount of its exports, and an important addition to the value of these will draw after it a corresponding increase of importations.  It has happened in the vicissitudes of the seasons that the harvests of all Europe have in the late summer and autumn fallen short of their usual average.  A relaxation of the interdict upon the importation of grain and flour from abroad has ensued, a propitious market has been opened to the granaries of our country, and a new prospect of reward presented to the labors of the husbandman, which for several years has been denied.  This accession to the profits of agriculture in the middle and western portions of our Union is accidental and temporary.  It may continue only for a single year.  It may be, as has been often experienced in the revolutions of time, but the first of several scanty harvests in succession.  We may consider it certain that for the approaching year it has added an item of large amount to the value of our exports and that it will produce a corresponding increase of importations.  It may therefore confidently be foreseen that the revenue of 1829 will equal and probably exceed that of 1828, and will afford the means of extinguishing ten millions more of the principal of the public debt.