Erroneous impressions, arising from the want of a proper attention to the structure of our Government, to the duties of its Chief Magistrate, to the principles it has adopted and its strict adherence to them in similar cases, might raise expectations which could never be realized and lead to measures destructive of all harmony between the parties.  This communication is made in full confidence that it is the wish of His Majesty’s Government, as it most sincerely is that of the President, to avoid all measures of that description; and it is hoped, therefore, that it will be received in the spirit by which it is dictated—­that of conciliation and peace.

The form of our Government and the functions of the President as a component part of it have in their relation to this subject been sufficiently explained in my previous correspondence, especially in my letter to the Comte de Rigny of the 29th of January last.  I have therefore little to add to that part of my representation which is drawn from the form of our Government and the duties of the President in administering it.  If these are fully understood, the principles of action derived from them can not be mistaken.

The President, as the chief executive power, must have a free and entirely unfettered communication with the coordinate powers of Government.  As the organ of intercourse with other nations, he is the only source from which a knowledge of our relations with them can be conveyed to the legislative branches.  It results from this that the utmost freedom from all restraint in the details into which he is obliged to enter of international concerns and of the measures in relation to them is essential to the proper performance of this important part of his functions.  He must exercise them without having continually before him the fear of offending the susceptibility of the powers whose conduct he is obliged to notice.  In the performance of this duty he is subject to public opinion and his own sense of propriety for an indiscreet, to his constituents for a dangerous, and to his constitutional judges for an illegal, exercise of the power, but to no other censure, foreign or domestic.  Were any foreign powers permitted to scan the communications of the Executive, their complaints, whether real or affected, would involve the country in continual controversies; for the right being acknowledged, it would be a duty to exercise it by demanding a disavowal of every phrase they might deem offensive and an explanation of every word to which an improper interpretation could be given.  The principle, therefore, has been adopted that no foreign power has a right to ask for explanations of anything that the President, in the exercise of his functions, thinks proper to communicate to Congress, or of any course he may advise them to pursue.  This rule is not applicable to the Government of the United States alone, but, in common with it, to all those in which the constitutional powers are distributed