Suppose, sir, that the President of the United States, under similar circumstances, had withheld a treaty from Congress requiring an appropriation, for fourteen months after it had been duly ratified, and had thus forfeited the national faith to a foreign government, what would have been the consequence? Sir, he ought to have been, he would have been impeached. No circumstances could ever have justified such conduct in the eyes of the American Congress or the American people. After all the provocation which the President had received, as the representative of his country, what was his conduct? It might have been supposed that this violent man, as the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Southard) has designated him, would at once have recommended decisive measures. Judging from his energy,—from his well-known devotion to the interests of his country,—and above all, from his famous declaration to ask nothing from foreign nations but what was right, and to submit to nothing wrong, I should have expected from him an indignant message at the commencement of the next session of Congress. Instead of that, the message of December, 1833, in relation to French affairs, is of the mildest character. It breathes a spirit of confident hope that our ancient ally would do us justice during the next session of the Chambers. His exposition of the subject is concluded by the following declaration: “As this subject involves important interests, and has attracted a considerable share of the public attention, I have deemed it proper to make this explicit statement of its actual condition; and should I be disappointed in the hope now entertained, the subject will be again brought to the notice of Congress in such a manner as the occasion may require.” And thus ends the first act of this astonishing historical drama. Throughout the whole of it, beginning, middle and end, the French government, and not the French Chambers, were exclusively to blame. We have now arrived at the mission of Mr. Livingston. He reached Paris in September, 1833. The Duc de Broglie assured him “that the king’s government would willingly and without hesitation promise to direct the deliberations of the Chambers to the _projet de loi_ relative to the execution of the convention of July 4, 1831, on the day after the Chamber is constituted, and to employ every means to secure the happy conclusion of an affair, the final determination of which the United States cannot desire more ardently than ourselves.” After this assurance, and after all that had passed, it was confidently expected that the king would, in strong terms, have recommended the adoption of the appropriation by the Chambers. In this we were again doomed to disappointment. In his opening speech he made no direct allusion to the subject. He simply says, that, “the financial laws, and those required for the execution of treaties, will be presented to you.”