e message, made a communication to the French
Government under date of the 29th of January, 1835,[14] calculated to
remove all impressions which an unreasonable susceptibility had created.
He repeated and called the attention of the French Government to the
disavowal contained in the message itself of any intention to intimidate
by menace; he truly declared that it contained and was intended to
contain no charge of ill faith against the King of the French, and
properly distinguished between the right to complain in unexceptionable
terms of the omission to execute an agreement and an accusation of
bad motives in withholding such execution, and demonstrated that the
necessary use of that right ought not to be considered as an offensive
imputation. Although this communication was made without instructions
and entirely on the minister's own responsibility, yet it was afterwards
made the act of this Government by my full approbation, and that
approbation was officially made known on the 25th of April, 1835, to
the French Government. It, however, failed to have any effect. The law,
after this friendly explanation, passed with the obnoxious amendment,
supported by the King's ministers, and was finally approved by the King.

The people of the United States are justly attached to a pacific
system in their intercourse with foreign nations. It is proper,
therefore, that they should know whether their Government has adhered
to it. In the present instance it has been carried to the utmost extent
that was consistent with a becoming self-respect. The note of the 29th
of January, to which I have before alluded, was not the only one which
our minister took upon himself the responsibility of presenting on the
same subject and in the same spirit. Finding that it was intended to
make the payment of a just debt dependent on the performance of a
condition which he knew could never be complied with, he thought it a
duty to make another attempt to convince the French Government that
whilst self-respect and regard to the dignity of other nations would
always prevent us from using any language that ought to give offense,
yet we could never admit a right in any foreign government to ask
explanations of or to interfere in any manner in the communications
which one branch of our public councils made with another; that in
the present case no such language had been used, and that this had
in a former note been fully and voluntarily stated, before it w