been very gratifying to the Executive that the New Loan was not negociated until the question of the old one had been satisfactorily settled, and that circumstances so favourable were taken advantage of, which had they been overlooked, might have reduced us to the necessity of accepting conditions highly burthensome. You will examine with scrupulous attention the Documents which will be laid before you, and you will receive from the Secretary of the Treasury every information you may be desirous to obtain, since in this examination are involved the interests of our Constituents, the honour of the Government, and the good faith of the Republic. I can congratulate myself by anticipation that Congress and the Nation will be well satisfied with this transaction.

It is highly important to the public prosperity and to national credit that you dedicate a portion of your labours to the funding of the National Debt; every revolving year is accumulating fresh difficulties for futurity. The Debt embraces various periods, purposes and creditors, that have not yet had a proper classification. You must be well aware of the propriety of such a classification, and of making appropriations, for the punctual discharge of the interest, and the gradual extinction of the Principal. Although in the last Session an Act passed on this matter, you will agree with the Executive that it was both imperfect and informal.

The Standing Army has continued to give proofs of its obedience to the Laws. Although it has had no enemies to combat within the Republic, it has remained on the War footing, which the Politics of Europe rendered necessary. The Executive ordered the Law decreeing the levy of 50,000 men to be carried into effect, so far as it deemed it to be expedient, to reinforce the Auxiliary Army in Peru, to cover the Maritime Departments and to organize the several Corps of Reserve in the Interior. The National Militia has been ordered to be formeil on the footing which a Resolution of the Constituent Congress established, so that the Battalions in the service have been augmented by considerable bodies of Citizens, who acknowledge the defence of the Country to be their first duty. You will examine the Provisional Decrees passed by the Executive in executing the Laws on this point, and you will permanently establish the organization of the National Militia in all its branches and details. These measures, and the abundance of the materials of War which we possess, have placed the Republic in a posture to be enabled to present herself completely armed in defence of her independence and of her liberty.

Our Maritime Force is receiving the increase and amelioration which our circumstances permit. The Colombian Flag has made itself respected in every Sea, and wherever it has been engaged in conflict with the Flag of Castile, it has left there a monument of the superiority which the intrepidity of the Sailors of our Navy has attached to it. The Executive has taken measures to fix at once the extent of the Marine

as well on the high Seas, as along the Coasts and Rivers, and to get rid of those Vessels which at present only occasion immense expenses : little, however, can be done unless education be encouraged in this important branch of the service, and the Laws for its Organization and Administration be passed which have been noticed at a former period. Nautical instruction has begun to be established in Carthagena and Guayaquil, with the slender means at the disposal of the Executive: it cannot make a rapid progress unless Congress do all in its power to favour it. Having represented to Congress the state of the Army in my former Messages, pointing out the Laws which appeared to me necessary and just, I shall confine myself merely to recall these representations to your remembrance, in the hope that objects of so much interest may occupy your attention in the present Session.

Such is the state of the Republic in all the branches of its Administration. Amity and good understanding with the American and Foreign Governments; regularity in its Conventions and Treaties; order and tranquillity in the Interior; respect and submission to the Laws; free exercise of the Press; the extension and encouragement of public Education; well grounded hopes of the amelioration of the National Finances; an Army, covered with laurels, absolutely devoted to the cause of Independence and Liberty; and sufficient resources to maintain in every event its dignity, its Government, and its Laws. It remains for you to remove the obstacles which impede the rapid march of the Republic towards a more perfect state of prosperity, and correct the defects which public opinion and your own conviction may have discovered. If we cast our view retrospectively and recollect what Colombia was on the day of the promulgation of our Code, we shall acknowledge with agreeable surprize that we have passed over a great space, surmounting enormous difficulties. This reflection should animate us to proceed with zeal, loyalty, and patriotism in the exercise of our respective faculties. The Executive has grounds for expecting the display of these virtues from the Representatives in the Legislative Body, and you must be confident that you will meet, on my part, with all the necessary assistance which experience in the Administration may enable me to offer, and, above all, with the strictest punctuality in the execution of your wise deliberations.

FRANCISCO DE PAULA SANTANDER.

MESSAGE of the President to the Senate of The United States, transmitting a Convention and Correspondence with Great Britain, relative to the Suppression of the Slave Trade-Washington, 30th April, 1824.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

I TRANSMIT to the Senate, for their Constitutional advice with regard

to its ratification, a Convention for the suppression of the Afócas Slave Trade, signed at London, on the 13th ult., by the Minister of The United States, residing there, on their part, with the Plenipotentiaries of the British Government, on the part of that Nation; together with the Correspondence relating thereto; part of which is included in a Communication made to the House of Representatives on the 19th ult. a printed Copy of which is among the Documents herewith sent.

Motives of accommodation to the wishes of the British Government, render it desirable that the Senate should act definitively upon this Convention, as speedily as may be found convenient.

Washington, April 30, 1824.

SIR,

JAMES MONROE.

No. 1.-Mr. Rush to Mr. Adams.

London, January 23, 1824.

I RECEIVED, on the evening of the 20th instant, a Note from Mr. Secretary Canning, requesting me to call, on the following day, at the Foreign Office, for the purpose of meeting there Mr. Huskisson and Mr. Stratford Canning, by which I at once understood, that the Negotiation which the President had confided to me, was now about to have its regular commencement. I went at the time appointed, when, meeting these Gentlemen, I was informed by them, that their instructions, as well as Full Powers, as the Plenipotentiaries of this Government, were made out, and that all things were ready, on their side, for opening the negotiation. I replied, that I too was ready on the part of The United States, upon which the 23d was fixed upon for our first meeting.

The negotiation has accordingly been opened this day in due form, at the Office of the Board of Trade. At the wish of Mr. Secretary Canning, specially expressed at the Foreign Office the day before yesterday, the subject of the Slave Trade is that upon which we have first entered. Our introductory conference upon it occupied a couple of hours, when an adjournment took place until Thursday next, the 29th instant. It was agreed that the same subject should then be resumed, and, without discussing others, proceeded with until it should be finished.

In making my reports to you of this negotiation, for the infor mation of the President, my intention is, not to make them from meeting to meeting, a course that might often prove unsatisfactory and unavailing, but to wait the issue of the whole, or, at any rate, the completion of some one subject, before I proceed to write about it. This was the plan pursued at the joint negotiation with this Court, in 1818, in which I bore a share, and I hope will be approved. I will take care to deviate from it, whenever circumstances may seem to

render a deviation necessary and proper. As, moreover, I must, simultaneously with this negotiation, attend to the business of the legation, it has occurred to me, that, as often as I may find it necessary to write to you respecting the latter, whilst the negotiation is in progress, I will go on with the regular series in numbering my Despatches, treating those that I shall write on the negotiation as distinct, and so numbering them.

I cannot flatter myself with the expectation that the work of the negotiation will be very soon done. The subjects are many and complicated; the session of Parliament is at hand, and will, when it arrives, make heavy calls upon the time of one of the British Plenipotentiaries: added to which the daily interruptions to which my own time is liable, always the lot of the permanent incumbent of this mission, will be too liable to increase the unavoidable obstacles to frequent and rapid conferences. I can only repeat, that my best endeavours shall not be spared; and I presume to hope, that my past conduct in this trust will be accepted as the pledge of my future diligence. Although there have been delays in bringing on the negotiation, all my preliminary correspondence in relation to it, will, I trust, have not arisen through my instrumentality.

The standing of one of the British Plenipotentiaries is so well known with us, that I need not speak of it. The other, Mr. Huskisson, (first named in the Commission,) is of the Cabinet, a distinguished Member of the House of Commons, the President of the Board of Trade, and Treasurer of the Navy. Besides his reputation for talents which is high, he seems to be no less generally regarded as a man of liberal principle and conciliating temper.

I HAVE the honour to inform you, that I concluded and signed, on behalf of The United States, the day before yesterday, a Convention with this Government for the suppression of the Slave Trade, which Instrument I herewith transmit to your hands, to be laid before the President.

In my Despatch, No. 335, written previously to the commencement of the negotiation, I mentioned that Mr. Secretary Canning had expressed a wish that the subject of the Slave Trade should be treated separately from all others on which I had received the instructions of my Government, and that I had not thought it necessary to object to this course. In pursuance of it, this subject was accordingly taken up separately, and was the first upon which we entered, as you have

already been informed in my Despatch, which announced the formal opening of the negotiation. The only deviation from the course indicated in my latter Despatch, has been, that other subjects have since been gone into, though none, as yet, finished, a mode of proceeding that was found eligible.

With the Convention, I also transmit the Protocols of the several Conferences at which its provisions were discussed and settled, and for the better understanding of the whole subject, I proceed to give you a more full account of the nature and progress of the discussions, than can be afforded by the Protocols.

I offered, in the first instance, to the British Plenipotentiaries, and without any alteration, the Projet that came inclosed to me in your Despatch, No. 65, of the 24th of June, explaining, and recommending its provisions by such considerations as were to be drawn from your Despatch, and others that seemed apposite. They remarked, that they hoped it would be borne in mind, that the plan offered was not the choice of Great Britain, her preference having been distinctly made known to Europe, as well as The United States, for a different plan; nor was it, they said, necessary towards the more effectual abolition of the traffic by her own subjects, her home Statutes and prohibitions being already adequate to that end. As regarded the latter intimation, I replied, that The United States stood upon at least equal ground with Great Britain, their existing Laws against the Slave Trade being marked by even a higher tone of severity, and the consequent exclusion of their Citizens from all participation in the trade, being as was believed, so far as the virtue of municipal Laws could avail, not less effectual. As to the preference of Great Britain for a different plan, I contented myself with alluding, without more of retrospect, to the uniform objections that had been made to it by the leading Powers of Europe, especially by France and Russia, as well as by The United States; and with remarking, that my Government had charged me with the duty of presenting the Projet in question, under the twofold view of bringing forward, according to the wish of Great Britain, a substitute for the plan that had been rejected, and to carry into effect a resolution which had passed the House of Representatives of The United States upon this subject, at the close of the last Session of Congress. I added, that it was the sincere belief of my Government, rendering, at the same time, full justice to all the past efforts of Great Britain in the cause of Abolition, that, if she could see her way to the acceptance of the plan now offered, combining, as it did, the great principle of denouncing the Slave Trade as piracy, with a system of international co-operation for its suppression, the evil would be more effectually extirpated, and, at a day not distant, than by any other mode that had heretofore been devised. The British Plenipotentiaries replied, that they would give it a candid