that its effective portions can be called to any point in the Union, or volunteers instead of them to serve a sufficient time, are means which may always be ready, yet never preying on our resources until actually called into use.  They will maintain the public interests while a more permanent force shall be in course of preparation.  But much will depend on the promptitude with which these means can be brought into activity.  If war be forced upon us, in spite of our long and vain appeals to the justice of nations, rapid and vigorous movements in its outset will go far toward securing us in its course and issue, and toward throwing its burthens on those who render necessary the resort from reason to force.

The result of our negotiations, or such incidents in their course as may enable us to infer their probable issue; such further movements also on our western frontiers as may shew whether war is to be pressed there while negotiation is protracted elsewhere, shall be communicated to you from time to time as they become known to me, with whatever other information I possess or may receive, which may aid your deliberations on the great national interests committed to your charge.

TH.  JEFFERSON.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

DECEMBER 3, 1806.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: 

I have the satisfaction to inform you that the negotiation depending between the United States and the Government of Great Britain is proceeding in a spirit of friendship and accommodation which promises a result of mutual advantage.  Delays, indeed, have taken place, occasioned by the long illness and subsequent death of the British minister charged with that duty.  But the commissioners appointed by that Government to resume the negotiation have shewn every disposition to hasten its progress.  It is, however, a work of time, as many arrangements are necessary to place our future harmony on stable grounds.  In the meantime we find by the communications of our plenipotentiaries that a temporary suspension of the act of the last session prohibiting certain importations would, as a mark of candid disposition on our part and of confidence in the temper and views with which they have been met, have a happy effect on its course.  A step so friendly will afford further evidence that all our proceedings have flowed from views of justice and conciliation, and that we give them willingly that form which may best meet corresponding dispositions.

Add to this that the same motives which produced the postponement of the act till the 15th of November last are in favor of its further suspension, and as we have reason to hope that it may soon yield to arrangements of mutual consent and convenience, justice seems to require that the same measure may be dealt out to the few cases which may fall within its short course as to all others preceding and following it.  I can not, therefore, but recommend the suspension of this act for a reasonable time, on considerations of justice, amity, and the public interests.