of the correspondence of the Government and of the public press.  If the principle is correct, every communication which the President makes in relation to our foreign affairs, either to the Congress or to the public, ought in prudence to be previously submitted to these ministers, in order to avoid disputes and troublesome and humiliating explanations.  If the principle be submitted to, neither dignity nor independence is left to the nation.  To submit even to a discreet exercise of such a privilege would be troublesome and degrading, and the inevitable abuse of it could not be borne.  It must therefore be resisted at the threshold, and its entrance forbidden into the sanctuary of domestic consultations.  But whatever may be the principles of other governments, those of the United States are fixed; the right will never be acknowledged, and any attempt to enforce it will be repelled by the undivided energy of the nation.

I pray your excellency to observe that my argument does not deny a right to all foreign powers of taking proper exceptions to the governmental acts and language of another.  It is to their interference in its consultations, in its proceedings while yet in an inchoate state, that we object.  Should the President do an official executive act affecting a foreign power, or use exceptionable language in addressing it through his minister or through theirs; should a law be passed injurious to the dignity of another nation—­in all these and other similar cases a demand for explanation would be respectfully received, and answered in the manner that justice and a regard to the dignity of the complaining nation would require.

After stating these principles, let me add that they have not only been theoretically adopted, but that they have been practically asserted.  On two former occasions exceptions of the same nature were taken to the President’s message by the Government of France, and in neither did they produce any other explanation than that derived from the nature of our Government, and this seems on those occasions to have been deemed sufficient, for in both cases the objections were virtually abandoned—­one when Messrs. Marshall, Gerry, and Pinckney were refused to be received, and again in the negotiation between Prince Polignac and Mr. Rives.  In the former case, although the message of the President was alleged as the cause of the refusal to receive the ministers, yet without any such explanation their successors were honorably accredited.  In the latter case the allusion in the message to an apprehended collision was excepted to, but the reference made by Mr. Rives to the constitutional duties of the President seems to have removed the objection.