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.