Since the adjournment of Congress the Vice-President of the United States has passed from the scenes of earth, without having entered upon the duties of the station to which he had been called by the voice of his countrymen. Having occupied almost continuously for more than thirty years a seat in one or the other of the two Houses of Congress, and having by his singular purity and wisdom secured unbounded confidence and universal respect, his failing health was watched by the nation with painful solicitude. His loss to the country, under all the circumstances, has been justly regarded as irreparable. In compliance with the act of Congress of March 2, 1853, the oath of office was administered to him on the 24th of that month at Ariadne estate, near Matanzas, in the island of Cuba; but his strength gradually declined, and was hardly sufficient to enable him to return to his home in Alabama, where, on the 18th day of April, in the most calm and peaceful way, his long and eminently useful career was terminated. Entertaining unlimited confidence in your intelligent and patriotic devotion to the public interest, and being conscious of no motives on my part which are not inseparable from the honor and advancement of my country, I hope it may be my privilege to deserve and secure not only your cordial cooperation in great public measures, but also those relations of mutual confidence and regard which it is always so desirable to cultivate between members of coordinate branches of the Government. FRANKLIN PIERCE. SPECIAL MESSAGES. WASHINGTON, _December 12, 1853_. _To the Senate of the United States_: In answer to the resolutions of the Senate of the 17th of August, 1852, and 23d of February last, requesting a copy of correspondence relative to the claim on the Government of Portugal in the case of the brig _General Armstrong_, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State, to whose Department the resolutions were referred. FRANKLIN PIERCE. WASHINGTON, _December 12, 1853_. _To the Senate of the United States_: I transmit to the Senate, for its consideration with a view to ratification, a treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation between the United States and Paraguay, concluded on the 4th of March last. FRANKLIN PIERCE. WASHINGTON, _December 12, 1853_. _To the Senate of the United States_: I transmit to the Senate, for its consideration with a view to ratification, a treaty for the free navigation of the rivers Parana and Uruguay between the United States and the Argentine Confederation, concluded on the 10th of July last. FRANKLIN PIERCE. WASHINGTON, _December 12, 1853_. _To the Senate of the United States_: I transmit to the Senate, for its consideration with a view to ratification, a treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation between the United States and the Argentine Confederation, concluded on the 27th of July last. FRANKLIN PIERCE. WASHINGTON, _December 12, 1853_.