Transcribe Page

Gentlemen of the Senate

and the House of Representatives:

see page 17

Gentlemen of the Senate

and of the House of Representatives:

In assembling to discharge the important duties assigned to us respectively by the people, let us be grateful to a beneficent Providence, by whom our State has been preserved during the year that has just closed, from any calamity or popular commotion.

Nothing has occurred since the meeting of the last Legislature, to interrupt the increasing prosperity of the State; industry of every class has been in constant and unprecedented demand, and has received corresponding reward; the agriculturist has been most bountifully blest, both in his seed time and in his honest, and the commerce of our citizens has sustained its elevated character for successful enterprise upon every sea under the watchful guardianship of the nation at administration. At such a juncture in our history as a State, and under circumstances so prosperous and full of pleasing promise in relation to the future, the demands of the public for general legislation are necessarily few, and such such as do exist are happily