It having been stipulated by the seventh article of the convention of navigation and commerce which was concluded on the 24th of June, 1822, between the United States and France, that the said convention should continue in force for two years from the 1st of October of that year, and for an indefinite term afterwards, unless one of the parties should declare its intention to renounce it, in which event it should cease to operate at the end of six months from such declaration, and no such intention having been announced, the convention having been found advantageous to both parties, it has since remained, and still remains, in force.  At the time when that convention was concluded many interesting subjects were left unsettled, and particularly our claim to indemnity for spoliations which were committed on our commerce in the late wars.  For these interests and claims it was in the contemplation of the parties to make provision at a subsequent day by a more comprehensive and definitive treaty.  The object has been duly attended to since by the Executive, but as yet it has not been accomplished.  It is hoped that a favorable opportunity will present itself for opening a negotiation which may embrace and arrange all existing differences and every other concern in which they have a common interest upon the accession of the present King of France, an event which has occurred since the close of the last session of Congress.

With Great Britain our commercial intercourse rests on the same footing that it did at the last session.  By the convention of 1815 the commerce between the United States and the British dominions in Europe and the East Indies was arranged on a principle of reciprocity.  That convention was confirmed and continued in force, with slight exceptions, by a subsequent treaty for the term of ten years from the 20th of October, 1818, the date of the latter.  The trade with the British colonies in the West Indies has not as yet been arranged, by treaty or otherwise, to our satisfaction.  An approach to that result has been made by legislative acts, whereby many serious impediments which had been raised by the parties in defense of their respective claims were removed.  An earnest desire exists, and has been manifested on the part of this Government, to place the commerce with the colonies, likewise, on a footing of reciprocal advantage, and it is hoped that the British Government, seeing the justice of the proposal and its importance to the colonies, will ere long accede to it.

The commissioners who were appointed for the adjustment of the boundary between the territories of the United States and those of Great Britain, specified in the fifth article of the treaty of Ghent, having disagreed in their decision, and both Governments having agreed to establish that boundary by amicable negotiation between them, it is hoped that it may be satisfactorily adjusted in that mode.  The boundary specified by the sixth article has been established by the decision of the commissioners.  From the progress made in that provided for by the seventh, according to a report recently received, there is good cause to presume that it will be settled in the course of the ensuing year.