FELLOW-CITIZENS - You are assembled under circumstances which demand the acknowledgment of our heartfelt thankfulness to the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe. The year which has just closed is marked by the usual abundance of our harvests, the general prosperity of our people, our exemption from the calamities of fire and flood, by which other communities have been desolated, and the absence of all minor evils, excepting such as are the fruit of our own errors and improvidence.

We have a special cause for gratulation in the prevailing calm which has succeeded the late contested election of the Chief Magistrate of the Union, furnishing, as it does, renewed evidence of the ready acquiescence of the people of the United States in whatever the majority, through the settled forms of the Constitution, deliberately decide. When we consider that five-sixths of all the States have cast their votes for the same candidate for their suffrages, may we not regard it as an indication that the animosi ties incident to the late deplorable conflict between the two great sections of our country are gradually wearing away, and that a liberal and enlightened policy on the part of Congress and the

eminent citizen, on whom the public confidence has been thus signally bestowed, will lead to an eventual and not far distant oblivion of past differences? No achievement can be more intiinately interwoven with our common prosperity, or more worthy of the co-operation of all good citizens, than the obliteration of those sectional distinctions which have proved so fruitful a source of discord and strife.

The administration of the federal government during the last four years has, under many important aspects, been eminently successful. More than three hundred and sixty millions of the public debt have been paid; the heavy burdens patriotically assumed by the people, to prevent a dismemberment of the Union by intestine war, have been essentially lightened through the abolition of taxes; questions of an irritating character between us and Great Britain have been amicably and satisfactorily settled; our obligations of good faith toward other nations have been scrupulously fulfilled, and the peace of the country has been inflexibly maintained in the presence of events which appealed with great force to our sympathies as a free people.

Withdrawing the attention from the broader field of our federal relations, and bringing it within the circle of our own immediate concerns, may I not appeal to you in the spirit of conciliation which presages for the former a tranquil future, to forget that party associations have ever divided us, and invoke your earnest and patriotic concurrence in the correction of abuses, the consideration of which entered so largely into the recent State election, and in regard to which the popular will has been so decisively expressed?

The first message of a Governor of the State must necessarily, from the short period intervening between his election and the meeting of the Legislature, be confined to the presentation of his own views upon subjects familiar to the great body of his fellowcitizens. He can only know the condition of the different departments of the State government through the reports of the officers

having them in charge. These reports will be submitted to you, and I proceed to give a synopsis of them in anticipation of the more detailed information which they contain.

RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES.

The receipts and payments from the treasury on account of all the funds, except the canal and free school funds, for the fiscal year ending 30th September, 1872, were as follows:

During the last few years the sums voted by the legislature for various objects were greatly in excess of the current revennes. By this improvident legislation deficiencies to the amount of more than six millions of dollars accrued and were left to be provided for by succeeding legislatures. I believe it to be a just and salutary rule that no appropriation of money should be made without providing, simultaneously, the means of payment. No better safeguard could be found against extravagant and inconsiderate legislation; for it is hardly to be supposed that a legislative body would have the recklessness to run the State in debt by wasteful expenditure, and incur the additional odium of laying taxes upon the people to defray them. An unsuccessful attempt was made to throw the burden of these deficits upon posterity by adding them to the permanent State debt, but it failed through a constitutional obstacle, and the amount was added, by the comptroller, to the tax levy for the current year.

I earnestly appeal to you to correct these errors on the part of your predecessors by abstaining from all expenditures which are not indispensable to an economical administration of the government. The people of the State are already weighed down by enormous burdens of taxation. I believe it to be in your power to lighten these burdens by a prudent husbandry of our financial,

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