to a full understanding
of the subject, to the end that Congress might adopt the legislation
necessary and proper to carry the treaty into effect. Neither the
address of the commissioners, nor the reply of the President of
Mexico on the occasion of their presentation, nor the memorandum of
conversations embraced in the paper called a protocol, nor the
correspondence now sent, were communicated, because they were not
regarded as in any way material; and in this I conformed to the
practice of our Government. It rarely, if ever, happens that all the
correspondence, and especially the instructions to our ministers, is
communicated. Copies of these papers are now transmitted, as being
within the resolutions of the House calling for all such "correspondence
as appertains to said treaty."

When these papers were received at Washington, peace had been restored,
the first installment of three millions paid to Mexico, the blockades
were raised, the City of Mexico evacuated, and our troops on their
return home. The war was at an end, and the treaty, as ratified by the
United States, was binding on both parties, and already executed in a
great degree. In this condition of things it was not competent for the
President alone, or for the President and Senate, or for the President,
Senate, and House of Representatives combined, to abrogate the treaty,
to annul the peace and restore a state of war, except by a solemn
declaration of war.

Had the protocol varied the treaty as amended by the Senate of the
United States, it would have had no binding effect.

It was obvious that the commissioners of the United States did not
regard the protocol as in any degree a part of the treaty, nor as
modifying or altering the treaty as amended by the Senate. They
communicated it as the substance of conversations held after the Mexican
Congress had ratified the treaty, and they knew that the approval of the
Mexican Congress was as essential to the validity of a treaty in all its
parts as the advice and consent of the Senate of the United States. They
knew, too, that they had no authority to alter or modify the treaty in
the form in which it had been ratified by the United States, but that,
if failing to procure the ratification of the Mexican Government
otherwise than with amendments, their duty, imposed by express
instructions, was to ask of Mexico to send without delay a commissioner
to Washington to exchange ratifications here if the amendments