“You will easily conceive, sir, and the Cabinet of Washington will, we think, understand it also, that such phrases incidentally inserted in documents, the purport and tenor of which are purely polemical, surrounded, in some measure, by details of a controversy, which is besides not always free from bitterness, cannot dispel sufficiently the impression produced by the perusal of the message, nor strike the mind as would the same idea expressed in terms single, positive, direct, and unaccompanied by any recrimination concerning facts or incidents no longer of any importance. Such is the motive which, among many others, has placed the French government in the impossibility of acceding to the wish expressed by Mr. Livingston, towards the conclusion of his note of the 29th of April, by declaring (to the Chamber of Peers probably) that previous explanations given by the minister of the United States, and subsequently approved by the President, had satisfied it.”
After having thus announced the kind of explanation which would be expected, he states, that the French government “in pausing then for the present, and waiting for the fulfilment of those engagements to be claimed, (the engagements of the treaty) and expecting those to be claimed in terms consistent with the regard due to it, it is not afraid of being accused, nor France, which it represents, of being accused of appreciating national honor by any number of millions, which it could withhold as a compensation for any injury offered to it.” The letter concludes by authorizing Mr. Pageot to read it to Mr. Forsyth, and if he be desirous, to let him take a copy of it.
It is impossible to peruse this letter, able and ingenious as it is, without at once perceiving that it asks what the President can never grant, without violating the principle that France has no right to demand an explanation of his message.
On the 11th of September, Mr. Pageot, the French chargé d’affaires, called at the Department of State and read this despatch to Mr. Forsyth. The latter did not think proper to ask a copy of it; and for this he has been loudly condemned. In my judgment, his conduct was perfectly correct.
No objection can be made to this indirect mode of communication with the Government of the United States adopted by the duke. It is sanctioned by diplomatic usage. The rules, however, which govern it, are clearly deducible from its very nature. It is a mere diplomatic feeler thrown out to ascertain the views of another government. The duke himself justly observes that its object is “to avoid the irritation which might involuntarily rise from an exchange of contradictory notes in a direct controversy.”
Had Mr. Forsyth asked and received a copy of this despatch, he must have given it an answer. Respect for the source from which it proceeded would have demanded this at his hands. If this answer could have been nothing but a direct refusal to comply with the suggestions of the French government, then he was correct in not requesting leave to take a copy of it. Why was this the case? Because it would have added to the difficulties of the question, already sufficiently numerous, and would have involved him in a direct controversy, which it is the very object of this mode of communication to prevent. This is the reason why it was left by the despatch itself, within his own option whether to request a copy or not; and his refusal to make this request ought to have given no offence to the French government.
Now, sir, what answer could he have given to this communication, but a direct refusal? Had not the duke been fully apprised before he wrote this despatch, that it could receive no other answer? It required explanations as a condition of the payment of the money, which he had been informed the President could never make. On this ground, then, and for the very purpose of avoiding controversy, the conduct of Mr. Forsyth is correct.
But there is another reason to justify his conduct, which, I think, must carry conviction to every mind. The President proposed, in his annual message, voluntarily to declare, that he had never intended to menace France, or to impeach the faith of the French government. This he has since done in the strongest terms. As offence was taken by the French government at the language of a former message, it was believed that such a declaration in a subsequent message would be, as it ought to be, entirely satisfactory to France. Had Mr. Forsyth taken a copy of this despatch, and placed it among the archives of the Government, how could the President have made, consistently with his principles, the disclaimer which he has done? A demand for an explanation would thus have been interposed by a foreign government, which would have compelled him to remain silent. The refusal of Mr. Forsyth to ask a copy of the despatch, left the controversy in its old condition; and, so far as our government was concerned, left this letter from the Duke de Broglie to Mr. Pageot as if it never had been written. The President, therefore, remained at perfect liberty to say what he thought proper in his message.
If this letter had proposed any reasonable terms of reconciling our difficulties with France—if it had laid any foundation on which a rational hope might have rested that it would become the means of producing a result so desirable, it would have been the duty of Mr. Forsyth to request a copy. Upon much reflection, however, I must declare that I cannot imagine what good could have resulted from it in any contingency; and it might have done much evil. Had it prevented the President from speaking as he has done in his last message, concerning France, it might have involved the country in a much more serious misunderstanding with that power than existed at the present moment.
I should be glad to say no more of this despatch, if I could do so consistently with a sense of duty. Mr. Pageot did not rest satisfied with Mr. Forsyth’s omission to request a copy of it, as he ought to have done. He deemed it proper to attempt to force that upon him which the despatch itself had left entirely to his own discretion. Accordingly, on the 1st of December last, he enclosed him a copy. On the third, Mr. Forsyth returned it with a polite refusal. On the fifth, Mr. Pageot again addressed Mr. Forsyth, and avowed that his intention in communicating the document, “was to make known the real disposition of my government to the President of the United States, and through him to Congress and the American people.” Thus it is manifest that his purpose was to make the President the instrument by which he might appeal to the American people against the American Government. After he had failed in this effort, what is his next resort? He publishes this despatch to the people of the United States through the medium of our public journals. I now hold in my hand the number of the Courier des Etats Unis of the 20th of January, a journal published in New York, which contains the original despatch in the French language. In a subsequent number of the same journal, of the 24th January, there is an editorial article on the subject of the President’s special message to Congress, and of this despatch, of a part of which I shall give my own translation. It is as follows: