836_.

CHARLES BANKHEAD, Esq.:

The undersigned, Secretary of State of the United States, has had the
honor to receive the note of the 27th ultimo of Mr. Charles Bankhead,
His Britannic Majesty's charge d'affaires, offering to the Government of
the United States the mediation of His Britannic Majesty's Government
for the settlement of the differences unhappily existing between the
United States and France. That communication having been submitted
to the President, and considered with all the care belonging to the
importance of the subject and the source from which it emanated,
the undersigned has been instructed to assure Mr. Bankhead that the
disinterested and honorable motives which have dictated the proposal are
fully appreciated. The pacific policy of His Britannic Majesty's cabinet
and their efforts to heal dissensions arising among nations are worthy
of the character and commanding influence of Great Britain, and the
success of those efforts is as honorable to the Government by whose
instrumentality it was secured as it has been beneficial to the parties
more immediately interested and to the world at large.

The sentiments upon which this policy is founded, and which are so
forcibly displayed in the offer that has been made, are deeply impressed
upon the mind of the President. They are congenial with the institutions
and principles as well as with the interests and habits of the people of
the United States, and it has been the constant aim of their Government
in its conduct toward other powers to observe and illustrate them.
Cordially approving the general views of His Britannic Majesty's
Government, the President regards with peculiar satisfaction the
enlightened and disinterested solicitude manifested by it for the
welfare of the nations to whom its good offices are now tendered, and
has seen with great sensibility, in the exhibition of that feeling, the
recognition of that community of interests and those ties of kindred by
which the United States and Great Britain are united.

If circumstances did not render it certain, it would have been obvious
from the language of Mr. Bankhead's note to the undersigned that the
Government of His Britannic Majesty, when the instructions under which
it was prepared were given, could not have been apprised of all the
steps taken in the controversy between the United States and France.
It was necessarily ignorant of the tenor of the two recent messages of
the President to