on that account. We are induced to hope that we shall not be altogether considered as foreigners having no particular affinity or connection with the United States, but that trade and commerce, upon which the prosperity of this State much depends, will be preserved as free and open between this and the United States as our different situations at present can possibly admit; earnestly desiring and proposing to adopt such commercial regulations on our part as shall not tend to defeat the collection of the revenue of the United States, but rather to act in conformity to or cooperate therewith, and desiring also to give the strongest assurances that we shall during our present situation use our utmost endeavors to be in preparation from time to time to answer our proportion of such part of the interest or principal of the foreign and domestic debt as the United States shall judge expedient to pay and discharge. We feel ourselves attached by the strongest ties of friendship, kindred, and of interest with our sister States, and we can not without the greatest reluctance look to any other quarter for those advantages of commercial intercourse which we conceive to be more natural and reciprocal between them and us. I am, at the request and in behalf of the general assembly, your most obedient, humble servant, JOHN COLLINS, _Governor_. His Excellency the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. UNITED STATES, _February 9, 1790_. _Gentlemen of the Senate_: Among the persons appointed during the last session to offices under the National Government there were some who declined serving. Their names and offices are specified in the first column of the foregoing list.[2] I supplied these vacancies, agreeably to the Constitution, by temporary appointments, which you will find mentioned in the second column of the list. These appointments will expire with your present session, and, indeed, ought not to endure longer than until others can be regularly made. For that purpose I now nominate to you the persons named in the third column of the list as being, in my opinion, qualified to fill the offices opposite to their names in the first. Go. WASHINGTON. [Footnote 2: Omitted.] UNITED STATES, _December 14, 1790_. _Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Representatives_: Having informed Congress of the expedition which had been directed against certain Indians northwest of the Ohio, I embrace the earliest opportunity of laying before you the official communications which have been received upon that subject. Go. WASHINGTON. [The following was transmitted with the message of January 26, 1791 (see Vol. I, p. 95).] [From Annals of Congress, Vol. II, 2116-2118.] PARIS, _June 20, 1790_. Mr. PRESIDENT: