ormation from
his dispatches, which will be laid before you.

As it is often necessary that nations should treat for the mutual
advantage of their affairs, and especially to accommodate and terminate
differences, and as they can treat only by ministers, the right of
embassy is well known and established by the law and usage of nations.
The refusal on the part of France to receive our minister is, then, the
denial of a right; but the refusal to receive him until we have acceded
to their demands without discussion and without investigation is to
treat us neither as allies nor as friends, nor as a sovereign state.

With this conduct of the French Government it will be proper to take
into view the public audience given to the late minister of the United
States on his taking leave of the Executive Directory. The speech of the
President discloses sentiments more alarming than the refusal of a
minister, because more dangerous to our independence and union, and at
the same time studiously marked with indignities toward the Government
of the United States. It evinces a disposition to separate the people of
the United States from the Government, to persuade them that they have
different affections, principles, and interests from those of their
fellow-citizens whom they themselves have chosen to manage their common
concerns, and thus to produce divisions fatal to our peace. Such
attempts ought to be repelled with a decision which shall convince
France and the world that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under
a colonial spirit of fear and sense of inferiority, fitted to be the
miserable instruments of foreign influence, and regardless of national
honor, character, and interest.

I should have been happy to have thrown a veil over these transactions
if it had been possible to conceal them; but they have passed on the
great theater of the world, in the face of all Europe and America, and
with such circumstances of publicity and solemnity that they can not be
disguised and will not soon be forgotten. They have inflicted a wound in
the American breast. It is my sincere desire, however, that it may be
healed.

It is my sincere desire, and in this I presume I concur with you and
with our constituents, to preserve peace and friendship with all
nations; and believing that neither the honor nor the interest of the
United States absolutely forbid the repetition of advances for securing
these desirable objects with France, I shall