I communicate with great satisfaction the accession of another State (Illinois) to our Union, because I perceive from the proof afforded by the additions already made the regular progress and sure consummation of a policy of which history affords no example, and of which the good effect can not be too highly estimated.  By extending our Government on the principles of our Constitution over the vast territory within our limits, on the Lakes and the Mississippi and its numerous streams, new life and vigor are infused into every part of our system.  By increasing the number of the States the confidence of the State governments in their own security is increased and their jealousy of the National Government proportionally diminished.  The impracticability of one consolidated government for this great and growing nation will be more apparent and will be universally admitted.  Incapable of exercising local authority except for general purposes, the General Government will no longer be dreaded.  In those cases of a local nature and for all the great purposes for which it was instituted its authority will be cherished.  Each government will acquire new force and a greater freedom of action within its proper sphere.  Other inestimable advantages will follow.  Our produce will be augmented to an incalculable amount in articles of the greatest value for domestic use and foreign commerce.  Our navigation will in like degree be increased, and as the shipping of the Atlantic States will be employed in the transportation of the vast produce of the Western country, even those parts of the United States which are most remote from each other will be further bound together by the strongest ties which mutual interest can create.

The situation of this District, it is thought, requires the attention of Congress.  By the Constitution the power of legislation is exclusively vested in the Congress of the United States.  In the exercise of this power, in which the people have no participation, Congress legislate in all cases directly on the local concerns of the District.  As this is a departure, for a special purpose, from the general principles of our system, it may merit consideration whether an arrangement better adapted to the principles of our Government and to the particular interests of the people may not be devised which will neither infringe the Constitution nor affect the object which the provision in question was intended to secure.  The growing population, already considerable, and the increasing business of the District, which it is believed already interferes with the deliberations of Congress on great national concerns, furnish additional motives for recommending this subject to your consideration.

When we view the great blessings with which our country has been favored, those which we now enjoy, and the means which we possess of handing them down unimpaired to our latest posterity, our attention is irresistibly drawn to the source from whence they flow.  Let us, then, unite in offering our most grateful acknowledgments for these blessings to the Divine Author of All Good.