JOHN TYLER.

WASHINGTON, March 25, 1842.

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

Notwithstanding the urgency with which I have on more than one occasion felt it my duty to press upon Congress the necessity of providing the Government with the means of discharging its debts and maintaining inviolate the public faith, the increasing embarrassments of the Treasury impose upon me the indispensable obligation of again inviting your most serious attention to the condition of the finances.  Fortunately for myself in thus bringing this important subject to your view for a deliberate and comprehensive examination in all its bearings, and I trust I may add for a final adjustment of it to the common advantage of the whole Union, I am permitted to approach it with perfect freedom and candor.  As few of the burdens for which provision is now required to be made have been brought upon the country during my short administration of its affairs, I have neither motive nor wish to make them a matter of crimination against any of my predecessors.  I am disposed to regard, as I am bound to treat, them as facts which can not now be undone, and as deeply interesting to us all, and equally imposing upon all the most solemn duties; and the only use I would make of the errors of the past is by a careful examination of their causes and character to avoid if possible the repetition of them in future.  The condition of the country, indeed, is such as may well arrest the conflict of parties.

The conviction seems at length to have made its way to the minds of all that the disproportion between the public responsibilities and the means provided for meeting them is no casual nor transient evil.  It is, on the contrary, one which for some years to come, notwithstanding a resort to all reasonable retrenchments and the constant progress of the country in population and productive power, must continue to increase under existing laws, unless we consent to give up or impair all our defenses in war and peace.  But this is a thought which I am persuaded no patriotic mind would for a moment entertain.  Without affecting an alarm, which I do not feel, in regard to our foreign relations, it may safely be affirmed that they are in a state too critical and involve too many momentous issues to permit us to neglect in the least, much less to abandon entirely, those means of asserting our rights without which negotiation is without dignity and peace without security.

In the report of the Secretary of the Treasury submitted to Congress at the commencement of the present session it is estimated that after exhausting all the probable resources of the year there will remain a deficit of about $14,000,000.  With a view partly to a permanent system of revenue and partly to immediate relief from actual embarrassment, that officer recommended, together with a plan for establishing a Government exchequer, some expedients of a more temporary character, viz, the issuing of Treasury notes and the extension of the time for which the loan authorized to be negotiated by the act of the last session should be taken.  Congress accordingly provided for an issue of Treasury notes to the amount of $5,000,000, but subject to the condition that they should not be paid away below par.