other national interests, and, in the
judgment of this Government, national interests of the highest order,
involved in the condition prescribed and insisted on by France which
it has been by the President made the duty of the undersigned to bring
distinctly into view. That condition proceeds on the assumption that a
foreign power whose acts are spoken of by the President of the United
States in a message to Congress, transmitted in obedience to his
constitutional duties, and which deems itself aggrieved by the language
thus held by him, may as a matter of right require from the Government
of the United States a direct official explanation of such language,
to be given in such form and expressed in such terms as shall meet the
requirements and satisfy the feelings of the offended party, and may
in default of such explanation annul or suspend a solemn treaty duly
executed by its constitutional organ. Whatever may be the responsibility
of those nations whose executives possess the power of declaring war
and of adopting other coercive remedies without the intervention of
the legislative department, for the language held by the Executive in
addressing that department, it is obvious that under the Constitution
of the United States, which gives to the Executive no such powers, but
vests them exclusively in the Legislature, whilst at the same time it
imposes on the Executive the duty of laying before the Legislature the
state of the nation, with such recommendations as he may deem proper,
no such responsibility can be admitted without impairing that freedom
of intercommunication which is essential to the system and without
surrendering in this important particular the right of self-government.
In accordance with this view of the Federal Constitution has been the
practice under it. The statements and recommendations of the President
to Congress are regarded by this Government as a part of the purely
domestic consultations held by its different departments--consultations
in which nothing is addressed to foreign powers, and in which they can
not be permitted to interfere, and for which, until consummated and
carried out by acts emanating from the proper constitutional organs,
the nation is not responsible and the Government not liable to account
to other States.

It will be seen from the accompanying correspondence that when the
condition referred to was first proposed in the Chamber of Deputies the
insuperable objections to it w