f the subject.

No steps have yet been taken toward making known to the Venezuelan
Government the conditional approval of the convention by the Senate.
This might have been necessary if the instrument had stipulated for a
ratification in the usual form and it had been ratified accordingly.
Inasmuch, however, as the convention contains no such stipulation, and
as some of the installments had been paid according to its terms, it has
been deemed preferable to suspend further proceedings in regard to it,
especially as it was not deemed improbable that the Senate might request
it to be returned. This anticipation has been realized.

JAMES BUCHANAN.

WASHINGTON, _February 5, 1861_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:

I have received from the governor of Kentucky certain resolutions
adopted by the general assembly of that Commonwealth, containing an
application to Congress for the call of a convention for proposing
amendments to the Constitution of the United States, with a request that
I should immediately place the same before that body. It affords me
great satisfaction to perform this duty, and I feel quite confident that
Congress will bestow upon these resolutions the careful consideration to
which they are eminently entitled on account of the distinguished and
patriotic source from which they proceed, as well as the great
importance of the subject which they involve.

JAMES BUCHANAN.

WASHINGTON, _February 8, 1861_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:

I deemed it a duty to transmit to Congress with my message of the 8th of
January the correspondence which occurred in December last between the
"commissioners" of South Carolina and myself.

Since that period, on the 14th of January, Colonel Isaac W. Hayne, the
attorney-general of South Carolina, called and informed me that he was
the bearer of a letter from Governor Pickens to myself which he would
deliver the next day. He was, however, induced by the interposition of
Hon. Jefferson Davis and nine other Senators from the seceded and
seceding States not to deliver it on the day appointed, nor was it
communicated to me until the 31st of January, with his letter of that
date. Their letter to him urging this delay bears date January 15, and
was the commencement of a correspondence, the whole of which in my
possession I now submit to Congress. A reference to each letter of the
series in proper order accompanies this message.

JAMES B