Where in past history does a parallel exist to the public happiness which is within the reach of the people of the United States? Where in any part of the globe can institutions be found so suited to their habits or so entitled to their love as their own free Constitution? Every one of them, then, in whatever part of the land he has his home, must wish its perpetuity. Who of them will not now acknowledge, in the words of Washington, that "every step by which the people of the United States have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency"? Who will not join with me in the prayer that the Invisible Hand which has led us through the clouds that gloomed around our path will so guide us onward to a perfect restoration of fraternal affection that we of this day may be able to transmit our great inheritance of State governments in all their rights, of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, to our posterity, and they to theirs through countless generations? ANDREW JOHNSON. SPECIAL MESSAGES. WASHINGTON, _December 11, 1865_. _To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_: I transmit a report of this date from the Secretary of State, and the papers referred to therein, concerning the Universal Exposition to be held at Paris in the year 1867, in which the United States have been invited by the Government of France to take part. I commend the subject to your early and favorable consideration. ANDREW JOHNSON. WASHINGTON, _December 13, 1865_. _To the Senate of the United States_: In answer to the resolution of the Senate of the 11th instant, requesting information on the subject of a decree of the so-called Emperor of Mexico of the 3d of October last, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State and the documents by which it was accompanied. ANDREW JOHNSON. WASHINGTON, _December 14, 1865_. _To the House of Representatives_: In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 11th instant, requesting information relative to a so-called decree concerning the reestablishment of slavery or peonage in the Republic of Mexico, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State and the documents by which it was accompanied. ANDREW JOHNSON. WASHINGTON, D.C., _December 18, 1865_. _To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_: In compliance with the requirements of the third section of the act approved March 3, 1865, I transmit herewith a communication from the Secretary of War, with the accompanying report and estimates of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. ANDREW JOHNSON. WASHINGTON, _December 18, 1865_. _To the Senate of the United States_: