denied. Allow it and
you will have frivolous as well as grave complaints to answer, and must
not only heal the wounds of a just national pride, but apply a remedy
to those of a morbid susceptibility. To show that my fear of the
progressive nature of these encroachments is not imaginary, I pray leave
to call your excellency's attention to the inclosed report from the
Secretary of State to the President. It is offered for illustration, not
for complaint; I am instructed to make none. Because the Government of
France has taken exceptions to the President's opening message, the
charge d'affaires of France thinks it his duty to protest against a
special communication, and to point out the particular passages in a
correspondence of an American minister with his own Government to the
publication of which he objects. If the principle I contest is just,
the charge d'affaires is right. He has done his duty as a vigilant
supervisor of the President's correspondence. If the principle is
admitted, every diplomatic agent at Washington will do the same, and we
shall have twenty censors of the correspondence of the Government and of
the public press. If the principle is correct, every communication which
the President makes in relation to our foreign affairs, either to the
Congress or to the public, ought in prudence to be previously submitted
to these ministers, in order to avoid disputes and troublesome and
humiliating explanations. If the principle be submitted to, neither
dignity nor independence is left to the nation. To submit even to
a discreet exercise of such a privilege would be troublesome and
degrading, and the inevitable abuse of it could not be borne. It must
therefore be resisted at the threshold, and its entrance forbidden
into the sanctuary of domestic consultations. But whatever may be the
principles of other governments, those of the United States are fixed;
the right will never be acknowledged, and any attempt to enforce it
will be repelled by the undivided energy of the nation.

I pray your excellency to observe that my argument does not deny a right
to all foreign powers of taking proper exceptions to the governmental
acts and language of another. It is to their interference in its
consultations, in its proceedings while yet in an inchoate state, that
we object. Should the President do an official executive act affecting
a foreign power, or use exceptionable language in addressing it through
his minister or throug