To the letter of Mr. Harris, Cooper replied on the 3d of May, 1832. This closed the discussion, at least so far as he was concerned.[1] But the controversy was followed by circumstances of a mortifying character. After the return to America of the United States minister, William (p. 114) C. Rives, Mr. Harris was nominated by the President, and confirmed by the Senate early in March, 1833, as _charge d'affaires_; and this office he held until the arrival of Edward Livingston, who was appointed minister on the 3d of May of the same year. Previously to this discreditable act, the Department of State had committed one of imbecility. It had issued a circular to the different local authorities of the Union with avowed reference to the finance controversy. Its purport was a request for them to furnish information in regard to the amount of public expenditures over which they had control. Against this course Cooper protested at once in a long and vigorous letter to the American people, written on the 10th of December, 1832, from Vevay, Switzerland, and first printed in the Philadelphia "National Gazette." He took the ground that in such a discussion local burdens ought not to be included. It was, in fact, by confusing various kinds of taxation, and taxation for various objects, that the French government party had been able to make any showing for their own side. The letter was widely circulated, and seems to have served its purpose in suppressing the information that had been asked. [Footnote 1: I express no opinion on the merits of this controversy, for I have seen very slight summaries only of the articles that appeared in the _Revue Britannique_. But it is proper to say that it was the opinion of the French liberals, that Cooper utterly demolished his antagonists in the controversy.]