and children of
the ex-Bashaw were to be restored to him, this did not appear either
to have been done or demanded; still, it was constantly expected that
explanations on the subject would be received. None, however, having
arrived when Mr. Davis went as consul to Tripoli, he was instructed to
demand the execution of the article. He did so, but was answered by the
exhibition of a declaration, signed by our negotiator the day after the
signature of the treaty, allowing four years for the restoration of the
family. This declaration and the letter of Mr. Davis stating what passed
on the occasion are now communicated to the Senate. On the receipt of
this letter I caused the correspondence of Mr. Lear to be diligently
reexamined in order to ascertain whether there might have been a
communication of this paper made and overlooked or forgotten. None such,
however, is found. There appears only in a journalized account of the
transaction by Mr. Lear, under date of June 3, a passage intimating that
he should be disposed to give time rather than suffer the business to be
broken off and our countrymen left in slavery; and again, that on the
return of the person who passed between himself and the Bashaw, and
information that the Bashaw would require time for the delivery of the
family, he consented, and went ashore to consummate the treaty. This was
done the next day, and being forwarded to us as ultimately signed, and
found to contain no allowance of time nor any intimation that there was
any stipulation but what was in the public treaty, it was supposed that
the Bashaw had, in fine, abandoned the proposition, and the instructions
before mentioned were consequently given to Mr. Davis.

An extract of so much of Mr. Lear's communication as relates to this
circumstance is now transmitted to the Senate, the whole of the papers
having been laid before them on a former occasion. How it has happened
that the declaration of June 5 has never before come to our knowledge
can not with certainty be said, but whether there has been a miscarriage
of it or a failure of the ordinary attention and correctness of that
officer in making his communications, I have thought it due to the
Senate as well as to myself to explain to them the circumstances
which have withheld from their knowledge, as they did from my own,
a modification which, had it been placed in the public treaty, would
have been relieved from the objections which candor and good faith ca