In regard to the American Republics, which from their proximity and other considerations have peculiar relations to this Government, while it has been my constant aim strictly to observe all the obligations of political friendship and of good neighborhood, obstacles to this have arisen in some of them from their own insufficient power to cheek lawless irruptions, which in effect throws most of the task on the United States. Thus it is that the distracted internal condition of the State of Nicaragua has made it incumbent on me to appeal to the good faith of our citizens to abstain from unlawful intervention in its affairs and to adopt preventive measures to the same end, which on a similar occasion had the best results in reassuring the peace of the Mexican States of Sonora and Lower California.
Since the last session of Congress a treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation and for the surrender of fugitive criminals with the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; a treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation with Nicaragua, and a convention of commercial reciprocity with the Hawaiian Kingdom have been negotiated. The latter Kingdom and the State of Nicaragua have also acceded to a declaration recognizing as international rights the principles contained in the convention between the United States and Russia of July 22, 1854. These treaties and conventions will be laid before the Senate for ratification.
The statements made in my last annual message respecting the anticipated receipts and expenditures of the Treasury have been substantially verified.
It appears from the report of the Secretary of the Treasury that the receipts during the last fiscal year, ending June 30, 1855, from all sources were $65,003,930, and that the public expenditures for the same period, exclusive of payments on account of the public debt, amounted to $56,365,393. During the same period the payments made in redemption of the public debt, including interest and premium, amounted to $9,844,528.
The balance in the Treasury at the beginning of the present fiscal year, July 1, 1855, was $18,931,976; the receipts for the first quarter and the estimated receipts for the remaining three quarters amount together to $67,918,734; thus affording in all, as the available resources of the current fiscal year, the sum of $86,856,710.
If to the actual expenditures of the first quarter of the current fiscal year be added the probable expenditures for the remaining three quarters, as estimated by the Secretary of the Treasury, the sum total will be $71,226,846, thereby leaving an estimated balance in the Treasury on July 1, 1856, of $15,623,863.41.
In the above-estimated expenditures of the present fiscal year are included $3,000,000 to meet the last installment of the ten millions provided for in the late treaty with Mexico and $7,750,000 appropriated on account of the debt due to Texas, which two sums make an aggregate amount of $10,750,000 and reduce the expenditures, actual or estimated, for ordinary objects of the year to the sum of $60,476,000.