M. VAN BUREN.

WASHINGTON, December 20, 1840.

To the House of Representatives of the United States: 

I herewith transmit to the House of Representatives a report[85] from the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers, in answer to their resolution of the 23d instant.

M. VAN BUREN.

[Footnote 85:  Transmitting correspondence with Great Britain relative to proceedings on the part of that Government which may have a tendency to interrupt our commerce with China.]

WASHINGTON, January 2, 1841.

To the House of Representatives of the United States: 

I think proper to communicate to the House of Representatives, in further answer to their resolution of the 21st ultimo, the correspondence which has since occurred between the Secretary of State and the British minister on the same subject.

M. VAN BUREN.

Mr. Fox to Mr. Forsyth.

WASHINGTON, December 29, 1840.

Hon. JOHN FORSYTH, etc.

SIR:  I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 26th instant, in which, in reply to a letter which I had addressed to you on the 13th, you acquaint me that the President is not prepared to comply with my demand for the liberation of Mr. Alexander McLeod, of Upper Canada, now imprisoned at Lockport, in the State of New York, on a pretended charge of murder and arson, as having been engaged in the destruction of the piratical steamboat Caroline on the 29th of December, 1837.

I learn with deep regret that such is the decision of the President of the United States, for I can not but foresee the very grave and serious consequences that must ensue if, besides the injury already inflicted upon Mr. McLeod of a vexatious and unjust imprisonment, any further harm should be done to him in the progress of this extraordinary proceeding.

I have lost no time in forwarding to Her Majesty’s Government in England the correspondence that has taken place, and I shall await the further orders of Her Majesty’s Government with respect to the important question which that correspondence involves.

But I feel it my duty not to close this communication without likewise testifying my vast regret and surprise at the expressions which I find repeated in your letter with reference to the destruction of the steamboat Caroline.  I had confidently hoped that the first erroneous impression of the character of that event, imposed upon the mind of the United States Government by partial and exaggerated representations, would long since have been effaced by a more strict and accurate examination of the facts.  Such an investigation must even yet, I am willing to believe, lead the United States Government to the same conviction with which Her Majesty’s authorities on the spot were impressed—­that the act was one, in the strictest sense, of self-defense, rendered absolutely