Among the unequivocal indications of our national prosperity is the flourishing state of our finances. The revenues of the present year, from all their principal sources, will exceed the anticipations of the last. The balance in the Treasury on the 1st of January last was a little short of $2,000,000, exclusive of two millions and a half, being the moiety of the loan of five millions authorized by the act of 26th of May, 1824. The receipts into the Treasury from the 1st of January to the 30th of September, exclusive of the other moiety of the same loan, are estimated at $16,500,000, and it is expected that those of the current quarter will exceed $5,000,000, forming an aggregate of receipts of nearly twenty-two millions, independent of the loan. The expenditures of the year will not exceed that sum more than two millions. By those expenditures nearly eight millions of the principal of the public debt have been discharged. More than a million and a half has been devoted to the debt of gratitude to the warriors of the Revolution; a nearly equal sum to the construction of fortifications and the acquisition of ordnance and other permanent preparations of national defense; half a million to the gradual increase of the Navy; an equal sum for purchases of territory from the Indians and payment of annuities to them; and upward of a million for objects of internal improvement authorized by special acts of the last Congress. If we add to these $4,000,000 for payment of interest upon the public debt, there remains a sum of about seven millions, which have defrayed the whole expense of the administration of Government in its legislative, executive, and judiciary departments, including the support of the military and naval establishments and all the occasional contingencies of a government coextensive with the Union.
The amount of duties secured on merchandise imported since the commencement of the year is about twenty-five millions and a half, and that which will accrue during the current quarter is estimated at five millions and a half; from these thirty-one millions, deducting the drawbacks, estimated at less than seven millions, a sum exceeding twenty-four millions will constitute the revenue of the year, and will exceed the whole expenditures of the year. The entire amount of the public debt remaining due on the 1st of January next will be short of $81,000,000.
By an act of Congress of the 3d of March last a loan of $12,000,000 was authorized at 4-1/2 per cent, or an exchange of stock to that amount of 4-1/2 per cent for a stock of 6 per cent, to create a fund for extinguishing an equal amount of the public debt, bearing an interest of 6 per cent, redeemable in 1826. An account of the measures taken to give effect to this act will be laid before you by the Secretary of the Treasury. As the object which it had in view has been but partially accomplished, it will be for the consideration of Congress whether the power with which it clothed the Executive should not be renewed at an early day of the present session, and under what modifications.