Prayer by Rev. Mr. Selkirk. The President then arose and addressed the Senate as follows: SENATORS-In taking this Chair and entering upon the duties of the office with which I have been honored by the people of this State, I have an adequate sense of the responsibilities of the position. Without any of the experience in legislative proceedings possessed by most of my predecessors, and which I believe to be requisite to a prompt and correct decision of perplexing questions, I may not at all times meet your expectations. But, with a firm determination to discharge the duties of my office honestly, faithfully and impartially, I shall expect and hope to receive your indulgence, until experience shall make me familiar with the proceedings of a body which has been distinguished for its order, dignity and learning. I congratulate you on the favorable circumstances under which we meet. The State and national administrations are once more in full accord. The country is in the enjoyment of peace at home and abroad. The people of the State are prosperous and contented, and in the enjoyment of all the rights and privileges guaranteed to them by the.Constitution and laws of the land. During this session important measures will be brought before you for your consideration, and much good is expected from your deliberations, in the enactment of good and wholesome laws. I am sure you will unite with me in wishing that the action of the Senate may be such as to meet the just expectations of the public, and conduce to the welfare, prosperity and happiness of the people of the State. Mr. Benedict offered the following: Resolved, That a committee of two be appointed to wait upon His Excellency the Governor, and inform him that the Senate is organized and ready to proceed to business. The President put the question whether the Senate would agree to said resolution, and it was decided in the affirmative. The President appointed as such committee, Messrs. Benedict and Lord. Mr. Chatfield offered the following: Resolved, That a committee of two be appointed to wait upon the Honorable the Assembly, and inform that body that the Senate is organized and ready to proceed to business. The President put the question whether the Senate would agree to said resolution, and it was decided in the affirmative. The President appointed as such committee, Messrs. Chatfield and. Cock. Mr. Adams offered the following: Resolved, That the Clerk of the Senate be directed to invite the clergymen of Albany, having charge of religious congregations, to open the daily sittings of the Senate with prayer, and to attend in such order as will best suit their convenience. The President put the question whether the Senate would agree to said resolution, and it was decided in the affirmative. Mr. Lewis offered the following: Resolved, That James Franklin, Jr., be and he hereby is appointed assistant doorkeeper, in place of John D. Lanergan, deceased. The President put the question whether the Senate would agree to said resolution, and it was decided in the affirmative. ! Mr. Woodin offered the following: Resolved, That the Clerk of the Senate make the usual arrangement for the payment of postage on all papers received and sent out by Senators; also, on all public documents sent out by Senators and officers during the session; the postage on any one document not to exceed forty cents; and, also, to send by express any document, costing over forty cents. Mr. Palmer moved that the resolution be laid upon the table. The President put the question whether the Senate would agree to said motion, and it was decided in the affirmative. Mr. D. P. Wood offered the follwing: Resolved, That H. C. Tanner be and he is hereby appointed Senate stenographer. The President put the question whether the Senate would agree to said resolution, and it was decided in the affirmative. Mr. Winslow offered the following: Resolved, That until further notice the Senate meet daily at eleven o'clock A. M. The President put the question whether the Senate would agree to said resolution, and it was decided in the affirmative. Mr. Benedict, from the committee appointed to wait upon His Excellency the Governor, and inform him that the Senate was organized and ready to proceed to business, reported that they had performed that duty, and that His Excellency informed them that he would communicate with the senate by message. Mr. Bowen offered the following: Resolved, That the Clerk of the Senate procure one copy of the Legislative Manual or Red Book for 1872 for each Senator and officer of the Senate. The President put the question whether the Senate would agree to said resolution, and it was decided in the affirmative. Mr. Lowery offered the following: Resolved (if the Assembly concur), That the assistant postmaster of each House be assigned the duty of weighing all documents sent by mail or express, and entering in a book to be kept for that purpose the amount of postage or express charges required thereon, reporting to the Clerk the aggregate amount thereof daily; that a suitable person be recommended by the Lieutenant-Governor and the Speaker of the Assembly for appointment as clerk in the Albany post-office to stamp all documents forwarded by the Legislature, his salary to be paid by the State directly and not indirectly, as is now the practice; and that he report to the Clerks of the two Houses weekly the amount of postage paid by him on account of each. Mr. Lewis moved that said resolution be laid upon the table. The President put the question whether the Senate would agree to said motion, and it was decided in the affirmative. Mr. Winslow moved that the Senate take a recess for fifteen minutes. The President put the question whether the Senate would agree to said motion, and it was decided in the affirmative. 6 TWELVE O'CLOCK AND TWENTY MINUTES, P. M. Senate again met. Mr. Chatfield, from the committee appointed to wait upon the Honorable the Assembly and inform that body that the Senate was organized and ready to proceed to business, reported that they had discharged that duty. Messrs. Prince and Weed, a committee from the Assembly, appeared in the Senate, and announced that the Assembly was organized and ready to proceed to business. A message from His Excellency the Governor was received, and read by the Clerk, in the words following: To the Senate and Assembly: EXECUTIVE CHAMBER, FELLOW-CITIZENS.-You are assembled under circumstances which demand the acknowledgment of our heartfelt thankfulness to the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe. The year which has just closed is marked by the usual abundance of our harvests, the general prosperity of our people, our exemption from the calamities of fire and flood, by which other communities have been desolated, and the absence of all minor evils, excepting such as are the fruit of our own errors and improvidence. We have a special cause for gratulation in the prevailing calm which has succeeded the late contested election of the Chief Magistrate of the Union, furnishing, as it does, renewed evidence of the ready acquiescence of the people of the United States in whatever the majority, through the settled forms of the Constitution, deliberately decide. When we consider that five-sixths of all the States have cast their votes for the same candidate for their suffrages, may we not regard it as an indication that the animosities incident to the late deplorable conflict between the two great sections of our country are gradually wearing away, and that a liberal and enlightened policy on the part of Congress and the eminent citizen, on whom the public confidence has been thus signally bestowed, will lead to an eventual and not far distant oblivion of past differences? No achievement can be more intimately interwoven. with our common prosperity, or more worthy of the co-operation of all good citizens, than the obliteration of those sectional distinctions which have proved so fruitful a source of discord and strife The administration of the federal government during the last four years has, under many important aspects, been eminently successful. More than three hundred and sixty millions of the public debt have been paid; the heavy burdens patriotically assumed by the people, to prevent a dismemberment of the Union by intestine war, have been essentially lightened through the abolition of taxes; questions of an irritating character between us and Great Britain have been amicably and satisfactorily settled; our obligations of good faith toward other nations have been scrupulously fulfilled, and the peace of the country has been inflexibly maintained in the presence of events which appealed with great force to our sympathies as a free people. Withdrawing the attention from the broader field of our federal relations, and bringing it within the circle of our own immediate concerns, may I not appeal to you in the spirit of conciliation which presages for the former a tranquil future, to forget that party associations have ever divided us, and invoke your earnest and patriotic concurrence in the correction of abuses, the consideration of which entered so largely into the recent State election, and in regard to which the popular will has been so decisively expressed? The first message of a Governor of the State must necessarily, from the short period intervening between his election and the meeting of the Legislature, be confined to the presentation of his own views upon subjects familiar to the great body of his fellow-citizens. He can only know the condition of the different departments of the State government through the reports of the officers having them in charge. These reports will be submitted to you, and I proceed to give a synopsis of them in anticipation of the more detailed information which they contain. RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES. The receipts and payments from the treasury on account of all the funds, except the canal and free school funds, for the fiscal year ending 30th September, 1872, were as follows: Receipts. Payments Balance in the treasury. $14,807,252 34 14,455,552 73 $351,699 61 During the last few years the sums voted by the Legislature for various objects were greatly in excess of the current revenues. By this improvident legislation deficiencies to the amount of more than six millions of dollars accrued and were left to be provided for by succeeding Legislatures. I believe it to be a just and salutary rule that no appropriation of money should be made without providing, simultaneously, the means of payment. No better safeguard could be found against extravagant and inconsiderate legislation; for it is hardly to be supposed that a legislative body would have the recklessness to run the State in debt by wasteful expenditure, and incur the additional odium of laying taxes upon the people to defray them. An unsuccessful attempt was made to throw the burden of these deficits upon posterity by adding them to the permanent State debt, but it failed through a constitutional obstacle, and the amount was added, by the Comptroller, to the tax levy for the current year. I earnestly appeal to you to correct these errors on the part of your predecessors by abstaining from all expenditures which are not indispensable to an economical administration of the government. The people of the State are already weighed down by enormous burdens of taxation. I believe it to be in your power to lighten these burdens by a prudent husbandry of our financial resources, by providing for a more strict supervision and management of public establishments, which now make heavy drafts upon the treasury, and by restricting appropriations of money to State objects. For the purpose of carrying these views into effect, I recommend the passage of a general law, authorizing and requiring the Comptroller, whenever in any year an appropriation by the Legislature shall exceed the amount of the revenue applicable to it, to provide for such deficiency by adding it to the tax levy. The people, on whom the burden falls, will be the more likely to scrutinize the appropriations by which it was created, and be enabled to decide whether they were required to meet the actual wants of the government, or whether they were the fruit of improvident legislation. In this manner they may hold their representatives to a strict accountability. During the years 1869, 1870 and 1871, more than $2,000,000 were bestowed upon private charities, for the most part of a local and sectarian character. I consider these appropriations inconsistent with our obligations to the great body of the tax payers, on whom the burden ultimately falls. The institutions for the support of which they are made are, for the most part, purely local. They belong to localities in which there are large accumulations of wealth, and where private contributions may be readily procured to sustain such as are deserving of support. They are almost invariably under the exclusive control of particular religious societies, with some of which a feeling of jealousy and a sense of injustice are naturally excited by any unequal distribution of the public bounty among them. Moreover, it appears to me to be a violation of every principle of equal justice to tax the people of St. Lawrence and Allegany, or any other remote interior county or district, for the support of private or sectarian charities in New York or other wealthy and populous cities. The last Legislature refused to make appropriations of the public money for these objects, and I hope you may consider their example worthy of imitation. STATE DEBT. The following statement shows the amount of the State debt on the 30th September, 1872, after deducting the unapplied balances of the sinking funds at that date: The sinking fund of the general fund includes $1,202,571.35, received since the close of the fiscal year, and from the sinking fund of the bounty fund the interest accrued to October 1, 1872, payable January 1, 1873, has been deducted. Thus, the entire funded debt of the State, on the 30th September, 1872, after deducting unapplied balances of the sinking funds, amounted to $25,386,725.84. On the 30th September, 1871, the entire funded debt of the State, after a like deduction, was $29,482,702.52. There was, therefore, during the last financial year, a reduction in the amount of the funded debt of $4,095,976.68. REDEMPTION OF THE STATE DEBT. On the first day of this month $847,500 of the canal debt became due, and the principal and interest were paid in coin. In July and November $4,303,600 more will fall due, and will be redeemed in specie by the commissioners of the canal fund. I trust the good faith of the State, in its fiscal transactions, will be scrupulously maintained, and that the |