id not reach Paris until more than a month after
the Chambers had been in session, and such was the insensibility of the
ministry to our rightful claims and just expectations that our minister
had been informed that the matter when introduced would not be pressed
as a cabinet measure.

Although the message was not officially communicated to the French
Government, and notwithstanding the declaration to the contrary which
it contained, the French ministry decided to consider the conditional
recommendation of reprisals a menace and an insult which the honor of
the nation made it incumbent on them to resent. The measures resorted
to by them to evince their sense of the supposed indignity were the
immediate recall of their minister at Washington, the offer of passports
to the American minister at Paris, and a public notice to the
legislative Chambers that all diplomatic intercourse with the United
States had been suspended. Having in this manner vindicated the dignity
of France, they next proceeded to illustrate her justice. To this end a
bill was immediately introduced into the Chamber of Deputies proposing
to make the appropriations necessary to carry into effect the treaty.
As this bill subsequently passed into a law, the provisions of which
now constitute the main subject of difficulty between the two nations,
it becomes my duty, in order to place the subject before you in a clear
light, to trace the history of its passage and to refer with some
particularity to the proceedings and discussions in regard to it.

The minister of finance in his opening speech alluded to the measures
which had been adopted to resent the supposed indignity, and recommended
the execution of the treaty as a measure required by the honor and
justice of France. He as the organ of the ministry declared the message,
so long as it had not received the sanction of Congress, a mere
expression of the personal opinion of the President, for which neither
the Government nor people of the United States were responsible, and
that an engagement had been entered into for the fulfillment of which
the honor of France was pledged. Entertaining these views, the single
condition which the French ministry proposed to annex to the payment of
the money was that it should not be made until it was ascertained that
the Government of the United States had done nothing to injure the
interests of France, or, in other words, that no steps had been
authorized by Congress of