I recommend an appropriation for the construction
of a building for the Department of State.
I recommend to your consideration the propriety of transferring to the
Department of the Interior, to which they seem more appropriately to
belong, all powers and duties in relation to the Territories with which
the Department of State is now charged by law or usage; and from the
Interior Department to the War Department the Pension Bureau, so far
as it regulates the payment of soldiers' pensions. I would further
recommend that the payment of naval pensions be transferred to one of
the bureaus of the Navy Department.
The estimates for the expenses of the Government for the next fiscal
year are $18,244,346.01 less than for the current one, but exceed the
appropriations for the present year for the same items $8,972,127.56.
In this estimate, however, is included $22,338,278.37 for public works
heretofore begun under Congressional provision, and of which only so
much is asked as Congress may choose to give. The appropriation for
the same works for the present fiscal year was $11,984,518.08.
The average value of gold, as compared with national currency, for the
whole of the year 1869 was about 134, and for eleven months of 1870 the
same relative value has been about 115.
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