Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The expectations justly founded upon the promises thus solemnly made to
this Government by that of France were not realized. The French
Chambers met on the thirty-first of July, 1834, soon after the
election, and although our minister in Paris urged the French ministry
to bring the subject before them, they declined doing so. He next
insisted that the Chambers, of prorogued without acting on the subject,
should be reassembled at a period so early that their action on the
treaty might be known in Washington prior to the meeting of Congress.
This reasonable request was not only declined, but the Chambers were
prorogued to the 29th of December, a day so late that their decision,
however urgently pressed, could not in all probability be obtained in
time to reach Washington before the necessary adjournment of Congress
by the Constitution. The reasons given by the ministry for refusing to
convoke the Chambers at an earlier period were afterwards shewn not to
be insuperable by their actual convocation on the first of December
under a special call for domestic purposes, which fact, however, did
not become known to this Government until after the commencement of the
last session of Congress.
Thus disappointed in our just expectations, it became my imperative
duty to consult with Congress in regard to the expediency of a resort
to retaliatory measures in case the stipulations of the treaty should
not be speedily complied with, and to recommend such as in my judgment
the occasion called for. To this end an unreserved communication of the
case in all its aspects became indispensable. To have shrunk in making
it from saying all that was necessary to its correct understanding, and
that the truth would justify, for fear of giving offense to others,
would have been unworthy of us. To have gone, on the other hand, a
single step further for the purpose of wounding the pride of a
Government and people with whom we had so many motives for cultivating
relations of amity and reciprocal advantage would have been unwise and
improper.
Admonished by the past of the difficulty of making even the simplest
statement of our wrongs without disturbing the sensibilities of those
who had by their position become responsible for their redress, and
earnestly desirous of preventing further obstacles from that source, I
went out of my way to preclude a construction of the message by which
the recommendation that was made to Congress might be regarded as a
menace to France in not only disavowing such a design, but in declaring
that her pride and her power were too well known to expect anything
from her fears. The message did not reach Paris until more than a month
after the Chambers had been in session, and such was the insensibility
of the ministry to our rightful claims and just expectations that our
minister had been informed that the matter when introduced would not be
pressed as a cabinet measure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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