Mr. Buchanan said that he had been so much gratified with the message which had just been read, that he could not, and he thought he ought not, at this the very first moment, to refrain from expressing his entire approbation of its general tone and spirit. He had watched with intense anxiety the progress of our unfortunate controversy with France. He had hoped, sincerely hoped, that the explanations which had been made by Mr. Livingston, and officially approved by the President of the United States, would have proved satisfactory to the French government. In this he had found his hopes to be vain. After this effort had failed, he felt a degree of confidence, almost amounting to moral assurance, that the last message to Congress would have been hailed by France, as it was by the American people, as the olive branch which would have restored amity and good understanding between us and our ancient ally. Even in this, he feared, he was again doomed to be disappointed. The government of France, unless they change their determination, will not consider this message as sufficient. We have the terms clearly prescribed by the Duke de Broglie, upon which, and upon which alone, the French government will consent to comply with the treaty, and to pay the five millions of dollars to our injured fellow-citizens. Speculation is now at an end. The clouds and darkness which have hung over this question have vanished. It is now made clear as a sunbeam. The money will not be paid, says the organ of the French government, unless the Government of the United States shall address its claim officially in writing to France, accompanied by what appeared to him, and he believed would appear to the whole American people, without distinction of party, to be a degrading apology. The striking peculiarity of the case, the one which he would undertake to say distinguished it from any other case which had arisen in modern times, in the intercourse between independent nations, was, that the very terms of this apology were dictated to the American Government by the French Secretary of Foreign Affairs. One of these terms was, that it had never entered into the intention (_pensée_), the thought of this Government, to call in question the good faith of the government of France. But the French Government proceed still further. Upon the refusal to make this apology, which they ought to have known would never be made—could never be made—they are not content to leave question where it then was. They have given us notice in advance that they will consider our refusal to make this degrading apology an evidence that the misunderstanding did not proceed on our part from mere error and mistake.