The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster / With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style

by Daniel Webster; Edwin Percy Whipple

Department of State, Washington,
November 14, 1842.

Sir,—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch of the 3d of October, brought by the "Great Western," which arrived at New York on the 6th instant.

It is probable you will have embarked for the United States before my communication can now reach you; but as it is thought proper that your letter should be answered, and as circumstances may possibly have occurred to delay your departure, this will be transmitted to Paris in the ordinary way.

Your letter has caused the President considerable concern. Entertaining a lively sense of the respectable and useful manner in which you have discharged, for several years, the duties of an important foreign mission, it occasions him real regret and pain, that your last official communication should be of such a character as that he cannot give to it his entire and cordial approbation.

It appears to be intended as a sort of protest, a remonstrance, in the form of an official despatch, against a transaction of the government to which you were not a party, in which you had no agency whatever, and for the results of which you were no way answerable. This would seem an unusual and extraordinary proceeding. In common with every other citizen of the republic, you have an unquestionable right to form opinions upon public transactions, and the conduct of public men; but it will hardly be thought to be among either the duties or the privileges of a minister abroad to make formal remonstrances and protests against proceedings of the various branches of the government at home, upon subjects in relation to which he himself has not been charged with any duty or partaken any responsibility.

The negotiation and conclusion of the treaty of Washington were in the hands of the President and Senate. They had acted upon this important subject according to their convictions of duty and of the public interest, and had ratified the treaty. It was a thing done; and although your opinion might be at variance with that of the President and Senate, it is not perceived that you had any cause of complaint, remonstrance, or protest, more than any other citizen who might entertain the same opinion.

In your letter of the 17th of September, requesting your recall, you observe: "The mail by the steam-packet which left Boston the 1st instant has just arrived, and has brought intelligence of the ratification of the treaties recently concluded with Great Britain. All apprehensions, therefore, of any immediate difficulties with that country are at an end, and I do not see that any public interest demands my further residence in Europe. I can no longer be useful here, and the state of my private affairs requires my presence at home. Under these circumstances, I beg you to submit to the President my wish for permission to retire from this mission, and to return to the United States without delay."

As you appeared at that time not to be acquainted with the provisions of the treaty, it was inferred that your desire to return home proceeded from the conviction that, inasmuch as all apprehensions of immediate differences with Great Britain were at an end, you would no longer be useful at Paris. Placing this interpretation on your letter, and believing, as you yourself allege, that your long absence abroad rendered it desirable for you to give some attention to your private affairs in this country, the President lost no time in yielding to your request, and, in doing so, signified to you the sentiments of approbation which he entertained for your conduct abroad. You may, then, well imagine the great astonishment which the declaration contained in your despatch of the 3d of October, that you could no longer remain in France honorably to yourself or advantageously to the country, and that the proceedings of this government had placed you in a false position, from which you could escape only by returning home, created in his mind.

The President perceives not the slightest foundation for these opinions. He cannot see how your usefulness as minister to France should be terminated by the settlement of difficulties and disputes between the United States and Great Britain. You have been charged with no duties connected with the settlement of these questions, or in any way relating to them, beyond the communication to the French government of the President's approbation of your letter of the 13th of February, written without previous instructions from this department. This government is not informed of any other act or proceeding of yours connected with any part of the subject, nor does it know that your official conduct and character have become in any other way connected with the question of the right of search; and that letter having been approved, and the French government having been so informed, the President is altogether at a loss to understand how you can regard yourself as placed in a false position. If the character or conduct of any one was to be affected, it could only be the character and conduct of the President himself. The government has done nothing, most assuredly, to place you in a false position. Representing your country at a foreign court, you saw a transaction about to take place between the government to which you were accredited and another power, which you thought might have a prejudicial effect on the interest of your own country. Thinking, as it is to be presumed, that the case was too pressing to wait for instructions, you presented a protest against that transaction, and our government approved your proceeding. This is your only official connection with the whole subject. If after this the President had sanctioned the negotiation of a treaty, and the Senate had ratified it, containing provisions in the highest degree objectionable, however the government might be discredited, your exemption from all blame and censure would have been complete. Having delivered your letter of the 13th of February to the French government, and having received the President's approbation of that proceeding, it is most manifest that you could be in no degree responsible for what should be done afterward, and done by others. The President, therefore, cannot conceive what particular or personal interest of yours was affected by the subsequent negotiation here, or how the treaty, the result of that negotiation, should put an end to your usefulness as a public minister at the court of France, or in any way affect your official character or conduct.

It is impossible not to see that such a proceeding as you have seen fit to adopt might produce much inconvenience, and even serious prejudice, to the public interests. Your opinion is against the treaty, a treaty concluded and formally ratified; and, to support that opinion, while yet in the service of the government, you put a construction on its provisions such as your own government does not put upon them, such as you must be aware the enlightened public of Europe does not put upon them, and such as England herself has not put upon them as yet, so far as we know.