Such, sir, are the determinations of which I am charged immediately to inform you, in order that you may make them known to the Government of the United States and that you may yourself take those measures which may seem to you to be the natural consequences of this communication.  The passports which you may desire are therefore at your disposition.

Accept, sir, the assurance of my high consideration.

DE RIGNY.

Mr. Livingston to Mr. Forsyth.

No. 72.

LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES,

Paris, January 15, 1835.

SIR:  Having determined to send Mr. Brown, one of the gentlemen attached to the legation, to Havre with my dispatches, I have just time to add to them the copy of the note which I have sent to the Comte de Rigny.  The course indicated by it was adopted after the best reflections I could give to the subject, and I hope will meet the approbation of the President.  My first impressions were that I ought to follow my inclinations, demand my passports, and leave the Kingdom.  This would at once have freed me from a situation extremely painful and embarrassing; but a closer attention convinced me that by so doing I should give to the French Government the advantage they expect to derive from the equivocal terms of their note, which, as occasions might serve, they might represent as a suggestion only, leaving upon me the responsibility of breaking up the diplomatic intercourse between the two countries if I demanded my passports; or, if I did not, and they found the course convenient, they might call it an order to depart which I had not complied with.  Baron Rothschild also called on me yesterday, saying that he had conversed with the Comte de Rigny, who assured him that the note was not intended as a notice to depart, and that he would be glad to see me on the subject.  I answered that I could have no verbal explanations on the subject, to which he replied that he had suggested the writing a note on the subject, but that the minister had declined any written communication.  Rothschild added that he had made an appointment with the Comte de Rigny for 6 o’clock, and would see me again at night, and he called to say that there had been a misunderstanding as to the time of appointment, and that he had not seen Mr. de Rigny, but would see him this morning.  But in the meantime I determined on sending my note, not only for the reasons contained in it, which appeared to me conclusive, but because I found that the course was the correct one in diplomacy, and that to ask for a passport merely because the Government near which the minister was accredited had suggested it would be considered as committing the dignity of his own; that the universal practice in such cases was to wait the order to depart, and not by a voluntary demand of passports exonerate the foreign Government from the odium and responsibility of so violent a measure.  My note will force them to take their