In deliberating, therefore, on these interesting subjects local feelings and prejudices should be merged in the patriotic determination to promote the great interests of the whole.  All attempts to connect them with the party conflicts of the day are necessarily injurious, and should be discountenanced.  Our action upon them should be under the control of higher and purer motives.  Legislation subjected to such influences can never be just, and will not long retain the sanction of a people whose active patriotism is not bounded by sectional limits nor insensible to that spirit of concession and forbearance which gave life to our political compact and still sustains it.  Discarding all calculations of political ascendancy, the North, the South, the East, and the West should unite in diminishing any burthen of which either may justly complain.

The agricultural interest of our country is so essentially connected with every other and so superior in importance to them all that it is scarcely necessary to invite to it your particular attention.  It is principally as manufactures and commerce tend to increase the value of agricultural productions and to extend their application to the wants and comforts of society that they deserve the fostering care of Government.

Looking forward to the period, not far distant, when a sinking fund will no longer be required, the duties on those articles of importation which can not come in competition with our own productions are the first that should engage the attention of Congress in the modification of the tariff.  Of these, tea and coffee are the most important.  They enter largely into the consumption of the country, and have become articles of necessity to all classes.  A reduction, therefore, of the existing duties will be felt as a common benefit, but like all other legislation connected with commerce, to be efficacious and not injurious it should be gradual and certain.

The public prosperity is evinced in the increased revenue arising from the sales of the public lands and in the steady maintenance of that produced by imposts and tonnage, not withstanding the additional duties imposed by the act of May 19th, 1828, and the unusual importations in the early part of that year.

The balance in the Treasury on January 1st, 1829 was $5,972,435.81.  The receipts of the current year are estimated at $24,602,230 and the expenditures for the same time at $26,164,595, leaving a balance in the Treasury on January 1st, 1830 of $4,410,070.81.

There will have been paid on account of the public debt during the present year the sum of $12,405,005.80, reducing the whole debt of the Government on January 1st, 1830 to $48,565,406.50, including $7 millions of the 5% stock subscribed to the Bank of the United States.  The payment on account of public debt made on July 1st, 1829 was $8,715,462.87.  It was apprehended that the sudden withdrawal of so large a sum from the banks in which it was deposited, at a time of unusual pressure in the money market, might cause much injury to the interests dependent on bank accommodations.  But this evil was wholly averted by an early anticipation of it at the Treasury, aided by the judicious arrangements of the officers of the Bank of the United States.