I could
not doubt that by this course the interests and honor of both countries
would be best consulted. Instructions were therefore given in this
spirit to the minister who was sent out once more to demand reparation.
Upon the meeting of Congress in December, 1829, I felt it my duty to
speak of these claims and the delays of France in terms calculated to
call the serious attention of both countries to the subject. The then
French ministry took exception to the message on the ground of its
containing a menace, under which it was not agreeable to the French
Government to negotiate. The American minister of his own accord refuted
the construction which was attempted to be put upon the message and at
the same time called to the recollection of the French ministry that
the President's message was a communication addressed, not to foreign
governments, but to the Congress of the United States, in which it
was enjoined upon him by the Constitution to lay before that body
information of the state of the Union, comprehending its foreign as well
as its domestic relations, and that if in the discharge of this duty he
felt it incumbent upon him to summon the attention of Congress in due
time to what might be the possible consequences of existing difficulties
with any foreign government, he might fairly be supposed to do so under
a sense of what was due from him in a frank communication with another
branch of his own Government, and not from any intention of holding
a menace over a foreign power. The views taken by him received my
approbation, the French Government was satisfied, and the negotiation
was continued. It terminated in the treaty of July 4, 1831, recognizing
the justice of our claims in part and promising payment to the amount
of 25,000,000 francs in six annual installments.

The ratifications of this treaty were exchanged at Washington on the
2d of February, 1832, and in five days thereafter it was laid before
Congress, who immediately passed the acts necessary on our part to
secure to France the commercial advantages conceded to her in the
compact. The treaty had previously been solemnly ratified by the King of
the French in terms which are certainly not mere matters of form, and of
which the translation is as follows:

We, approving the above convention in all and each of the dispositions
which are contained in it, do declare, by ourselves as well as by our
heirs and successors, that it is accepted, approved,