in the execution of the work during the last season will appear in their report now communicated to Congress.  On the receipt of it I took measures to obtain consent for making the road of the States of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, through which the commissioners proposed to lay it out.  I have received acts of the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia giving the consent desired; that of Pennsylvania has the subject still under consideration, as is supposed.  Until I receive full consent to a free choice of route through the whole distance I have thought it safest neither to accept nor reject finally the partial report of the commissioners.  Some matters suggested in the report belong exclusively to the Legislature.

TH.  JEFFERSON.

FEBRUARY 6, 1807.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: 

I lay before Congress the laws for the government of Louisiana, passed by the governor and judges of the Indiana Territory at their session at Vincennes begun on the 1st of October, 1804.

TH.  JEFFERSON.

FEBRUARY 6, 1807.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: 

The Government of France having examined into the claim of M. de Beaumarchais against the United States, and considering it as just and legal, has instructed its minister here to make representations on the subject to the Government of the United States.  I now lay his memoir thereon before the Legislature, the only authority competent to a final decision on the same.

TH.  JEFFERSON.

FEBRUARY 10, 1807.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: 

I communicate, for the information of Congress, a letter from Cowles Mead, secretary of the Mississippi Territory, to the Secretary of War, by which it will be seen that Mr. Burr had reached that neighborhood on the 13th of January.

TH.  JEFFERSON.

FEBRUARY 10, 1807.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: 

In compliance with the request of the House of Representatives expressed in their resolution of the 5th instant, I proceed to give such information as is possessed of the effect of gunboats in the protection and defense of harbors, of the numbers thought necessary, and of the proposed distribution of them among the ports and harbors of the United States.

Under present circumstances, and governed by the intentions of the Legislature as manifested by their annual appropriations of money for the purposes of defense, it has been concluded to combine, first, land batteries furnished with heavy cannon and mortars, and established on all the points around the place favorable for preventing vessels from lying before it; second, movable artillery, which may be carried, as occasion may require, to points unprovided with fixed batteries; third, floating batteries, and fourth, gunboats which may oppose an enemy at his entrance and cooperate with the batteries for his expulsion.