JAMES MONROE.

WASHINGTON, March 16, 1818.

To the Senate of the United States: 

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the United States of the 31st of December last, requesting the President to cause to be laid before them a statement of the proceedings which may have been had under the act of Congress passed on the 3d March, 1817, entitled “An act to set apart and dispose of certain public lands for the encouragement and cultivation of the vine and olive,” I now transmit a report from the Secretary of the Treasury, containing all the information possessed by the Executive relating to the proceedings under the said act.

JAMES MONROE.

WASHINGTON, March 16, 1818.

To the Senate of the United States: 

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the United States of the 3d of February last, requesting the President to cause to be laid before them “a statement of the progress made under the act to provide for surveying the coast of the United States, passed February 10, 1807, and any subsequent acts on the same subject, and the expenses incurred thereby,” I transmit a report from the Secretary of the Treasury containing the information required.

JAMES MONROE.

MARCH 19, 1818.

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

In the course of the last summer a negotiation was commenced with the Government of the Netherlands with a view to the revival and modification of the commercial treaty existing between the two countries, adapted to their present circumstances.

The report from the Secretary of State which I now lay before Congress will show the obstacles which arose in the progress of the conferences between the respective plenipotentiaries, and which resulted in the agreement between them then to refer the subject to the consideration of their respective Governments.  As the difficulties appear to be of a nature which may, perhaps, for the present be more easily removed by reciprocal legislative regulations, formed in the spirit of amity and conciliation, than by conventional stipulations, Congress may think it advisable to leave the subsisting treaty in its present state, and to meet the liberal exemption from discriminating tonnage duties which has been conceded in the Netherlands to the vessels of the United States by a similar exemption to the vessels of the Netherlands which have arrived, or may hereafter arrive, in our ports, commencing from the time when the exemption was granted to the vessels of the United States.  I would further recommend to the consideration of Congress the expediency of extending the benefit of the same regulation, to commence from the passage of the law, to the vessels of Russia, Hamburg, and Bremen, and of making it prospectively general in favor of every nation in whose ports the vessels of the United States are admitted on the same footing as their own.