In answer to a resolution of the House of Representatives of December 24, requesting the President of the United States to lay before the House such information as he may possess, and which may be disclosed without injury to the public good, relative to the determination of any sovereign, or combination of sovereigns, to assist Spain in the subjugation of her late colonies on the American continent, and whether any Government of Europe is disposed or determined to oppose any aid or assistance which such sovereign or combination of sovereigns may afford to Spain for the subjugation of her late colonies above mentioned, I have to state that I possess no information on that subject not known to Congress which can be disclosed without injury to the public good.

JAMES MONROE.

WASHINGTON, January 30, 1824.

To the House of Representatives of the United States: 

In compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 15th of December last, requesting the President of the United States “to communicate a plan for a peace establishment of the Navy of the United States,” I herewith transmit a report from the Secretary of the Navy, which contains the plan required.

In presenting this plan to the consideration of Congress, I avail myself of the occasion to make some remarks on it which the importance of the subject requires and experience justifies.

If a system of universal and permanent peace could be established, or if in war the belligerent parties would respect the rights of neutral powers, we should have no occasion for a navy or an army.  The expense and dangers of such establishments might be avoided.  The history of all ages proves that this can not be presumed; on the contrary, that at least one-half of every century, in ancient as well as modern times, has been consumed in wars, and often of the most general and desolating character.  Nor is there any cause to infer, if we examine the condition of the nations with which we have the most intercourse and strongest political relations, that we shall in future be exempt from that calamity within any period to which a rational calculation may be extended.  And as to the rights of neutral powers, it is sufficient to appeal to our own experience to demonstrate how little regard will be paid to them whenever they come in conflict with the interests of the powers at war while we rely on the justice of our cause and on argument alone.  The amount of the property of our fellow-citizens which was seized and confiscated or destroyed by the belligerent parties in the wars of the French Revolution, and of those which followed before we became a party to the war, is almost incalculable.