U.S.  GRANT.

PROCLAMATION.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas satisfactory evidence was given to me on the 17th day of this month by the Government of Portugal that the discriminating duties heretofore levied in the ports of Portugal on merchandise imported in vessels of the United States into said ports from other countries than those of which said merchandise was the growth, production, or manufacture have been abolished: 

Now, therefore, I, Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by an act of Congress of January 7, 1824, and by an act in addition thereto of May 24, 1828, do hereby declare and proclaim that the discriminating duties heretofore levied in ports of the United States upon merchandise imported in Portuguese vessels from countries other than those of which such merchandise is the growth, produce, or manufacture shall be, and are hereby, suspended and discontinued, this suspension or discontinuance to take effect on and after the said 17th day of this month and to continue so long as the reciprocal exemption of merchandise belonging to citizens of the United States from such discriminating duties shall be granted in the ports of Portugal.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

[SEAL.]

Done at the city of Washington, this 25th day of February, A.D. 1871, and of the Independence of the United States of America the ninety-fifth.

U.S.  GRANT.

By the President: 
  HAMILTON FISH,
    Secretary of State.

[NOTE.—­The Forty-second Congress, first session, met March 4, 1871, in accordance with the act of January 22, 1867.]

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

WASHINGTON, March 17, 1871.

To the Senate of the United States:

I transmit to the Senate, in compliance with its resolution of the 14th instant, a report from the Secretary of State, making known that official notice has been received at the Department of State of the ratification by the legislature of one, and only one, additional State—­to wit, that of New Jersey—­of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States since the 30th of March, 1870, the date of his certificate that three-fourths of the whole number of States in the United States had ratified that amendment and that it had become valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution of the United States.

U.S.  GRANT.

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 23, 1871.

To the Senate and House of Representatives: