to those assurances; but it is also true--and
your excellency seems to lose sight of that important uncontested
fact--that formal notice was given that the performance of those
promises would be expected according to their letter, and that he
could delay no longer than the 1st of December the execution of a duty
which those assurances had induced him to postpone. Whatever reasons
His Majesty's Government had for not complying with Mr. Serurier's
engagement, or however they may have interpreted it, the President could
not be precluded from considering the whole case as open and adding to
his statement the wrongs occasioned by the delays anterior to the vote
of rejection. Those delays are still unaccounted for, and are rendered
more questionable by the preference given to another treaty, although
subsequently made, for the guarantee of the Greek loan.

Confining your observations to this second period, you say that the
reproaches which the President thinks himself authorized in making to
France may be comprised in the following words:

"The Government of the King had promised to present the treaty of July
anew to the Chambers as soon as they could be assembled; but they have
been assembled on the 31st of July of the last year and the treaty has
not yet been presented."

Stating this as the whole of the complaint, you proceed, sir, in your
endeavor to refute it.

I am obliged, reluctantly, here to make use of arguments which in the
course of this discussion have been often repeated, but which seem to
have made no impression on His Majesty's Government. I am obliged, in
repelling the reproaches addressed to the President, to bring to your
recollection the terms of the promise on which he relied, the
circumstances attending it, and the object for which it was given. These
must be fully understood and fully waived before the question between us
can be resolved.

The circumstances under which Mr. Serurier's note was written are
material in considering its true import. The payment stipulated by a
treaty duly ratified on both sides had just been formally refused by a
vote of the Chamber of Deputies. More than two years had passed since
it had been proclaimed as the law of the land in the United States,
and ever since the articles favorable to France had been in constant
operation. Notice of this refusal had some time before been received by
the President. It would have been his duty, had nothing else occurred,
to communic