To the House of Representatives: 

I transmit herewith a communication from the Secretary of State, accompanied by a report of Mr. Somerville P. Tuck, appointed to carry out certain provisions of section 5 of an act entitled “An act to provide for the ascertainment of claims of American citizens for spoliations committed by the French prior to the 31st day of July, 1801,” approved January 20, 1885.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

[The same message was sent to the Senate.]

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 5, 1886.

To the Senate and House of Representatives: 

I transmit herewith a communication of 1st instant from the Secretary of the Interior, submitting a draft of a bill recommended by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, providing for the payment of improvements made by settlers on the lands of the Mescalero Indian Reservation in the Territory of New Mexico.

The subject is presented for the consideration and action of Congress.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 11, 1886.

To the Senate and House of Representatives: 

I herewith transmit a report from the Secretary of State, dated the 6th instant, touching the claims of Benjamin Weil and La Abra Silver Mining Company against the Government of Mexico.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 11, 1886.

To the Senate and House of Representatives: 

By a joint resolution of Congress approved March 3, 1877, the President was authorized and directed to accept the colossal statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World” when presented by the citizens of the French Republic, and to designate and set apart for the erection thereof a suitable site upon either Governors or Bedloes Island, in the harbor of New York, and upon the completion thereof to cause the statue “to be inaugurated with such ceremonies as will serve to testify the gratitude of our people for this expressive and felicitous memorial of the sympathy of the citizens of our sister Republic.”

The President was further thereby “authorized to cause suitable regulations to be made for its future maintenance as a beacon and for the permanent care and preservation thereof as a monument of art and the continued good will of the great nation which aided us in our struggle for freedom.”

Under the authority of this resolution, on the 4th day of July, 1884, the minister of the United States to the French Republic, by direction of the President of the United States, accepted the statue and received a deed of presentation from the Franco-American Union, which is now preserved in the archives of the Department of State.

I now transmit to Congress a letter to the Secretary of State from Joseph W. Drexel, esq., chairman of the executive committee of “the American committee on the pedestal of the great statue of ’Liberty Enlightening the World,’” dated the 27th of April, 1886, suggesting the propriety of the further execution by the President of the joint resolution referred to by prescribing the ceremonies of inauguration to be observed upon the complete erection of the statue upon its site on Bedloes Island, in the harbor of New York.