Your excellency begins by observing that nothing could have prepared His Majesty's Government for the impressions made upon it by the President's message, and that if the complaints he makes were as just as you think them unfounded, still you would have reason to be astonished at receiving the first communication of them in such a form. If His Majesty's Government was not prepared to receive complaints on the part of the United States for nonexecution of the treaty, everything I have said and written since I have had the honor of communicating with your excellency and your predecessors in office must have been misunderstood or forgotten. I can scarcely suppose the first, for if my whole correspondence is referred to and my verbal representations recollected they will be found in the most unequivocal language to express an extreme solicitude for the execution of the treaty, a deep disappointment at the several delays which have intervened, and emphatically the necessity which the President would be under of laying the matter before Congress at the time when in fact he has done so if before that period he did not receive notice that the law had passed for giving effect to the treaty. To urge the obligation of the treaty, to prepare His Majesty's Government for the serious consequences that must result from its breach or an unnecessary delay in executing it, was my duty, and it has been faithfully and unremittingly executed. To my own official representation on the 26th I added on the 29th July last the precise instructions I had received, to inform His Majesty's Government that "the President could not avoid laying before Congress on the 1st of December a full statement of the position of affairs on this interesting subject, or permit the session to end, as it must do on the 3d March, without recommending such measures as the justice and the honor of the country may require."
In this alone, then, there was sufficient, independently of my numerous applications and remonstrances, to prepare His Majesty's Government for the just complaints of the United States and for the "impression" they ought to produce, as well as for the "mode" in which they were communicated, a mode clearly pointed out in the passage I have quoted from my note of the 29th of July—that is to say, by the annual message from the President to Congress, which, as I have already had occasion to observe, His Majesty's ministers have erroneously considered as addressed directly to them, and, viewing it in that light, have arraigned this document as containing groundless complaints, couched in language not called for by the occasion, and offering for consideration means of redress offensive to the dignity of France. I shall endeavor by a plain exposition of facts to repel those charges. I shall examine them with the freedom the occasion requires, but, suppressing the feelings which some parts of your excellency's letter naturally excite, will, as far as possible, avoid all those topics for recrimination which press upon my mind. The observation I am about to make will not be deemed a departure from this rule, because it is intended to convey information which seems to have been wanted by His Majesty's minister when on a late occasion he presented a law to the Chamber of Deputies. It is proper, therefore, to state that although the military title of general was gloriously acquired by the present head of the American Government, he is not in official language designated as General Jackson, but as "the President of the United States," and that his communication was made in that character.
I proceed now to the examination of that portion of your excellency's letter which attempts to show that the complaints set forth in the President's message are groundless.
It begins by assuming as a principle of argument that after the Chamber of Deputies had rejected the law and His Majesty's Government had promised to present it anew the United States had by receiving that promise given up all right to complain of any anterior delays. I have vainly endeavored, sir, to find any rule of reasoning by which this argument can be supported. It would undoubtedly be much easier to strike off from the case the delays of two years in proposing the law than to justify them.
It is true that the United States, with a moderation and forbearance for which they receive no credit, waited two years, almost without complaint, for the performance of a treaty which engaged the faith of the French nation to pay a just indemnity, for which they had already waited more than twenty years. It is true that His Majesty's Government offered solemn assurances that as soon as the constitution of the country would permit a new attempt would be made to redeem the national pledge given by the treaty. It is true also that the President of the United States gave credit to those assurances; but it is also true—and your excellency seems to lose sight of that important uncontested fact—that formal notice was given that the performance of those promises would be expected according to their letter, and that he could delay no longer than the 1st of December the execution of a duty which those assurances had induced him to postpone. Whatever reasons His Majesty's Government had for not complying with Mr. Sérurier's engagement, or however they may have interpreted it, the President could not be precluded from considering the whole case as open and adding to his statement the wrongs occasioned by the delays anterior to the vote of rejection. Those delays are still unaccounted for, and are rendered more questionable by the preference given to another treaty, although subsequently made, for the guarantee of the Greek loan.
Confining your observations to this second period, you say that the reproaches which the President thinks himself authorized in making to France may be comprised in the following words:
"The Government of the King had promised to present the treaty of July anew to the Chambers as soon as they could be assembled; but they have been assembled on the 31st of July of the last year and the treaty has not yet been presented."
Stating this as the whole of the complaint, you proceed, sir, in your endeavor to refute it.
I am obliged, reluctantly, here to make use of arguments which in the course of this discussion have been often repeated, but which seem to have made no impression on His Majesty's Government. I am obliged, in repelling the reproaches addressed to the President, to bring to your recollection the terms of the promise on which he relied, the circumstances attending it, and the object for which it was given. These must be fully understood and fully waived before the question between us can be resolved.
The circumstances under which Mr. Sérurier's note was written are material in considering its true import. The payment stipulated by a treaty duly ratified on both sides had just been formally refused by a vote of the Chamber of Deputies. More than two years had passed since it had been proclaimed as the law of the land in the United States, and ever since the articles favorable to France had been in constant operation. Notice of this refusal had some time before been received by the President. It would have been his duty, had nothing else occurred, to communicate to Congress this event, so unexpected and so injurious to the interest of the country. One circumstance prevented the performance of this duty and justified the omission. The notice of the rejection was accompanied by information that the minister of France was instructed to make explanations and engagements on the subject, and that a ship of war would be dispatched with his instructions. The President had waited a month for the arrival of this ship. An unusually long session of Congress still afforded an opportunity for making the communication, even after her arrival. If made it would undoubtedly have produced consequences the nature of which may be imagined by considering the events that have since occurred. It was necessary, then, to prevent an interruption of the friendly relations between the two countries, that this communication should be postponed until the subsequent session of Congress; longer than that it was well known that it could not be deferred. This was clearly and explicitly stated in a conference between Mr. Sérurier and the Secretary of State of the United States, in which the former gave the promise in question. But the President desired to have the engagement in a written and official form (and as Mr. Sérurier expresses it in his letter), "pour des causes prises dans les nécessités de votre Gouvernement" What governmental necessity does he allude to? Clearly that which obliged the President to communicate these engagements to Congress at the next session.