I request your excellency to accept the assurance, etc,

D. SHELDON.

[Extracts of a letter from the Secretary of State to Mr. Brown, dated Washington, December 23, 1823.]

You will immediately after your reception earnestly call the attention of the French Government to the claims of our citizens for indemnity.

You will at the same time explicitly make known that this Government can not consent to connect this discussion with that of the pretension raised by France on the construction given by her to the eighth article of the Louisiana cession treaty.  The difference in the nature and character of the two interests is such that they can not with propriety be blended together.  The claims are of reparation to individuals for their property taken from them by manifest and undisputed wrong.  The question upon the Louisiana treaty is a question of right upon the meaning of a contract.  It has been fully, deliberately, and thoroughly investigated, and the Government of the United States is under the entire and solemn conviction that the pretension of France is utterly unfounded.  We are, nevertheless, willing to resume the discussion if desired by France; but to refuse justice to individuals unless the United States will accede to the construction of an article in a treaty contrary to what they believe to be its real meaning would be not only incompatible with the principles of equity, but submitting to a species of compulsion derogatory to the honor of the nation.

[Extract of a letter (No. 2) from James Brown, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the United States, dated April 28, 1824.]

I have in a letter to M. de Chateaubriand, copy of which I have now the honor to send, made an effort to separate the claims of our citizens from the Louisiana question.

Mr. Brown to M. de Chateaubriand.

PARIS, April 28, 1824.

His Excellency VISCOUNT DE CHATEAUBRIAND,

Minister of Foreign Affairs, etc.

SIR:  In the conference with which your excellency honored me a few days ago I mentioned a subject deeply interesting to many citizens of the United States, on which I have been instructed to address your excellency, and to which I earnestly wish to call your immediate attention.

It is well known to your excellency that my predecessor, Mr. Gallatin, during several years made repeated and urgent applications to His Majesty’s Government for the adjustment of claims to a very large amount, affecting the interests of American citizens and originating in gross violations of the law of nations and of the rights of the United States, and that he never could obtain from France either a settlement of those claims or even an examination and discussion of their validity.  To numerous letters addressed by him to His Majesty’s ministers on that subject either no answers were given or answers which had for their only object to postpone