usurp and exercise judicial authority within the United States, or where
the penalties on violations of the law of nations may have been
indistinctly marked, or are inadequate--these offenses can not receive too
early and close an attention, and require prompt and decisive remedies.

Whatsoever those remedies may be, they will be well administered by the
judiciary, who possess a long-established course of investigation,
effectual process, and officers in the habit of executing it.

In like manner, as several of the courts have doubted, under particular
circumstances, their power to liberate the vessels of a nation at peace,
and even of a citizen of the United States, although seized under a false
color of being hostile property, and have denied their power to liberate
certain captures within the protection of our territory, it would seem
proper to regulate their jurisdiction in these points. But if the Executive
is to be the resort in either of the two last-mentioned cases, it is hoped
that he will be authorized by law to have facts ascertained by the courts
when for his own information he shall request it.

I can not recommend to your notice measures for the fulfillment of our
duties to the rest of the world without again pressing upon you the
necessity of placing ourselves in a condition of complete defense and of
exacting from them the fulfillment of their duties toward us. The United
States ought not to indulge a persuasion that, contrary to the order of
human events, they will forever keep at a distance those painful appeals to
arms with which the history of every other nation abounds. There is a rank
due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not
absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid
insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of
the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known