Doc. No. 2. 9 duty of directing the proceedings for the taking of the sixth census or enumeration of the inhabitants of the United States, will report to the two Houses the progress of that work. The enumeration of persons has been completed, and exhibits a grand total of 17,069,453; making an increase over the census of 1830, of 4,202,646 inhabitants, and showing a gain in a ratio exceeding 32| per cent, for the last ten years. From the report of the Secretary of the Treasury you will be informed of the condition of the finances. The balance in the Treasury on the 1st of January last, as stated in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, submitted to Congress at the extra session, was $987,345 03. The receipts into the Treasury, during the first three quarters of this year, from all sources, amount to $23,467,052 52; the estimated receipts for the fourth quarter, amount to $6,943,095 25, amounting to $30,410,167 77 ; and making, with the balance in the Treasury on the 1st of January last, $31,397,512 80. The expenditures for the first three quarters of this year amount to $24,734,346 97. The expenditures for the fourth quarter, as estimated, will amount to $7,290,723 73 : thus making a total of $32,025,- 070 70; and leaving a deficit to be provided for, on the 1st of January next, of about $627,557 90. Of the loan of $12,000,000, which was authorized by Congress at its late session, only $5,432,726 88 have been negotiated. The shortness of time which it had to run has presented no inconsiderable impediment in the way of its being taken by capitalists at home, while the same cause would have operated with much greater force in the foreign market. For that reason the foreign market has not been resorted to; and it is now submitted, whether it would not be advisable to amend the law by making what remains undisposed of payable at a more distant day. Should it be necessary, in any view that Congress may take of the subject, to revise the existing tariff of duties, I beg leave to say that, in the performance of that most delicate operation, moderate counsels would seem to be the wisest. The Government under which it is our happiness to live owes its existence to the spirit of compromise which prevailed among its framers ; jarring and discordant opinions could only have been reconciled by that noble spirit of patriotism which prompted conciliation, and resulted in harmony. In the same spirit the compromise bill, as it is commonly called, was adopted at the session of 1833. While the people of no portion of the Union will ever hesitate to pay all necessary taxes for the support of Government, yet an innate repugnance exists to the imposition of burdens not really necessary for that object. In imposing duties, however, for the purposes of revenue, a right to discriminate as to the articles on which the duty shall be laid, as well as the amount, necessarily and most properly exists. Otherwise, the Government would be placed in the condition of having to levy the same duties upon all articles, the productive as well as the unproductive. The slightest duty upon some might have the effect of causing their importation to cease ; whereas others, entering extensively into the consumption of the country, mighf bear the heaviest, without any sensible diminution in the amount imported. So, also, the Government may be justified in so discriminating, by reference to other considerations of domestic policy connected with our manufactures. So long as the duties shall be laid with distinct reference to the wants of the Treasury, no well-founded objection can exist against them. It might be esteemed desirable that no such augmentation of the taxes
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