Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
This is not the first time that the Government of France has taken
exception to the messages of American Presidents. President Washington
and the first President Adams in the performance of their duties to the
American people fell under the animadversions of the French Directory.
The objection taken by the ministry of Charles X, and removed by the
explanation made by our minister upon the spot, has already been
adverted to. When it was understood that the ministry of the present
King took exception to my message of last year, putting a construction
upon it which was disavowed on its face, our late minister at Paris, in
answer to the note which first announced a dissatisfaction with the
language used in the message, made a communication to the French
Government under date of the 29th of January, 1835, calculated to
remove all impressions which an unreasonable susceptibility had
created. He repeated and called the attention of the French Government
to the disavowal contained in the message itself of any intention to
intimidate by menace; he truly declared that it contained and was
intended to contain no charge of ill faith against the King of the
French, and properly distinguished between the right to complain in
unexceptionable terms of the omission to execute an agreement and an
accusation of bad motives in withholding such execution, and
demonstrated that the necessary use of that right ought not to be
considered as an offensive imputation.
Although this communication was made without instructions and entirely
on the minister's own responsibility, yet it was afterwards made the
act of this Government by my full approbation, and that approbation was
officially made known on the 25th of April, 1835, to the French
Government. It, however, failed to have any effect. The law, after this
friendly explanation, passed with the obnoxious amendment, supported by
the King's ministers, and was finally approved by the King.
The people of the United States are justly attached to a pacific system
in their intercourse with foreign nations. It is proper, therefore,
that they should know whether their Government has adhered to it. In
the present instance it has been carried to the utmost extent that was
consistent with a becoming self-respect. The note of the 29th of
January, to which I have before alluded, was not the only one which our
minister took upon himself the responsibility of presenting on the same
subject and in the same spirit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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