st of July, 1834, soon after the election, and although our
minister in Paris urged the French ministry to bring the subject before
them, they declined doing so. He next insisted that the Chambers, if
prorogued without acting on the subject, should be reassembled at a
period so early that their action on the treaty might be known in
Washington prior to the meeting of Congress. This reasonable request
was not only declined, but the Chambers were prorogued to the 29th of
December, a day so late that their decision, however urgently pressed,
could not in all probability be obtained in time to reach Washington
before the necessary adjournment of Congress by the Constitution. The
reasons given by the ministry for refusing to convoke the Chambers at
an earlier period were afterwards shewn not to be insuperable by their
actual convocation on the 1st of December under a special call for
domestic purposes, which fact, however, did not become known to this
Government until after the commencement of the last session of Congress.

Thus disappointed in our just expectations, it became my imperative
duty to consult with Congress in regard to the expediency of a resort
to retaliatory measures in case the stipulations of the treaty should
not be speedily complied with, and to recommend such as in my judgment
the occasion called for. To this end an unreserved communication of the
case in all its aspects became indispensable. To have shrunk in making
it from saying all that was necessary to its correct understanding,
and that the truth would justify, for fear of giving offense to
others, would have been unworthy of us. To have gone, on the other
hand, a single step further for the purpose of wounding the pride of a
Government and people with whom we had so many motives for cultivating
relations of amity and reciprocal advantage would have been unwise and
improper. Admonished by the past of the difficulty of making even the
simplest statement of our wrongs without disturbing the sensibilities of
those who had by their position become responsible for their redress,
and earnestly desirous of preventing further obstacles from that source,
I went out of my way to preclude a construction of the message by which
the recommendation that was made to Congress might be regarded as a
menace to France in not only disavowing such a design, but in declaring
that her pride and her power were too well known to expect anything from
her fears. The message d