many interesting details connected with the operations of this establishment you are referred to the report of the Postmaster-General, and his suggestions for improving its revenues are recommended to your favorable consideration.  I repeat the opinion expressed in my last annual message that the business of this Department should be so regulated chat the revenues derived from it should be made to equal the expenditures, and it is believed that this may be done by proper modifications of the present laws, as suggested in the report of the Postmaster-General, without changing the present rates of postage.

With full reliance upon the wisdom and patriotism of your deliberations, it, will be my duty, as it will be my anxious desire, to cooperate with you in every constitutional effort to promote the welfare and maintain the honor of our common country.

JAMES K. POLK.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

WASHINGTON, December 14, 1846.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I transmit to the Senate, for their consideration and advice with regard to its ratification, a convention for the mutual surrender of criminals between the United States and the Swiss Confederation, signed by their respective plenipotentiaries on the 15th of September last at Paris.

I transmit also a copy of a dispatch from the plenipotentiary of the
United States, with the accompanying documents.

JAMES K. POLK.

WASHINGTON, December 22, 1846.

To the House of Representatives of the United States: 

In compliance with the request contained in the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 15th instant, I communicate herewith reports from the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy, with the documents which accompany them.

These documents contain all the “orders or instructions” to any military, naval, or other officer of the Government “in relation to the establishment or organization of civil government in any portion of the territory of Mexico which has or might be taken possession of by the Army or Navy of the United States.”

These orders and instructions were given to regulate the exercise of the rights of a belligerent engaged in actual war over such portions of the territory of our enemy as by military conquest might be “taken possession of” and be occupied by our armed forces—­rights necessarily resulting from a state of war and clearly recognized by the laws of nations.  This was all the authority which could be delegated to our military and naval commanders, and its exercise was indispensable to the secure occupation and possession of territory of the enemy which might be conquered.  The regulations authorized were temporary, and dependent on the rights acquired by conquest.  They were authorized as belligerent rights, and were to be carried into effect by military or naval officers.  They were but the amelioration of martial law, which modern civilization requires, and were due as well to the security of the conquest as to the inhabitants of the conquered territory.