Secretary of State of the United States.

SIR:  I have the honor to announce to you that, in consequence of the recall of Mr. Barton, the King’s Government has given me orders to lay down the character of charge d’affaires of His Majesty near the Government of the United States.  I shall therefore immediately begin the preparations for my return to France; but in the meantime I think proper to claim the protection of the Federal Government during the period which I may consider it necessary to remain in the United States.

I have the honor to be, with the most distinguished consideration, sir, your most humble and obedient servant,

A. PAGEOT.

No. 13.

Mr. Forsyth to Mr. Pageot.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, January 2, 1836.

M.  ALPHONSE PAGEOT, etc.

SIR:  I have the honor to acknowledge your note of this day’s date, in which you announce that you have the orders of your Government, given in consequence of the recall of Mr. Barton, to lay aside the character of charge d’affaires of the King of France near the Government of the United States.  The protection of the Federal Government is due and will of course be extended to you during the time necessary for your preparations to return to France.

I am, sir, with great consideration, your obedient servant,

JOHN FORSYTH.

C.

LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES,

Paris, January 29, 1835.

His Excellency COUNT DE RIGNY,

Minister Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs.

SIR:  Having already had occasion to acknowledge the receipt of your excellency’s letter of the 13th instant, and to answer that part of it which most urgently required my attention, I proceed to a consideration of the other matters which it contains.  I shall do this with a sincere desire to avoid everything that may excite irritation or increase difficulties which already unfortunately exist.  Guided by this disposition, I shall confine myself to an examination of your note, considered only as an exposition of the causes which His Majesty’s Government thinks it has to complain of in the message sent by the President of the United States to Congress at the opening of its present session.

Your excellency begins by observing that nothing could have prepared His Majesty’s Government for the impressions made upon it by the President’s message, and that if the complaints he makes were as just as you think them unfounded, still you would have reason to be astonished at receiving the first communication of them in such a form.  If His Majesty’s Government was not prepared to receive complaints on the part of the United States for nonexecution of the treaty, everything I have said and written since I have had the honor of communicating with your excellency and your predecessors in office must have