[SEAL.]

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States, at Washington, the 31st day of May, A.D. 1854, and the seventy-eighth of the Independence Of the United States.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

By the President: 
  W.L.  MARCY,
    Secretary of State.

SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON, December 4, 1854.

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: 

The past has been an eventful year, and will be hereafter referred to as a marked epoch in the history of the world.  While we have been happily preserved from the calamities of war, our domestic prosperity has not been entirely uninterrupted.  The crops in portions of the country have been nearly cut off.  Disease has prevailed to a greater extent than usual, and the sacrifice of human life through casualties by sea and land is without parallel.  But the pestilence has swept by, and restored salubrity invites the absent to their homes and the return of business to its ordinary channels.  If the earth has rewarded the labor of the husbandman less bountifully than in preceding seasons, it has left him with abundance for domestic wants and a large surplus for exportation.  In the present, therefore, as in the past, we find ample grounds for reverent thankfulness to the God of grace and providence for His protecting care and merciful dealings with us as a people.

Although our attention has been arrested by painful interest in passing events, yet our country feels no more than the slight vibrations of the convulsions which have shaken Europe.  As individuals we can not repress sympathy with human suffering nor regret for the causes which produce it; as a nation we are reminded that whatever interrupts the peace or checks the prosperity of any part of Christendom tends more or less to involve our own.  The condition of States is not unlike that of individuals; they are mutually dependent upon each other.  Amicable relations between them and reciprocal good will are essential for the promotion of whatever is desirable in their moral, social, and political condition.  Hence it has been my earnest endeavor to maintain peace and friendly intercourse with all nations.

The wise theory of this Government, so early adopted and steadily pursued, of avoiding all entangling alliances has hitherto exempted it from many complications in which it would otherwise have become involved.  Notwithstanding this our clearly defined and well-sustained course of action and our geographical position, so remote from Europe, increasing disposition has been manifested by some of its Governments to supervise and in certain respects to direct our foreign policy.  In plans for adjusting the balance of power among themselves they have assumed to take us into account, and would constrain us to conform our conduct to their views.  One or another of the powers of Europe