I proceed now to the examination of that portion of your excellency’s letter which attempts to show that the complaints set forth in the President’s message are groundless.

It begins by assuming as a principle of argument that after the Chamber of Deputies had rejected the law and His Majesty’s Government had promised to present it anew the United States had by receiving that promise given up all right to complain of any anterior delays.  I have vainly endeavored, sir, to find any rule of reasoning by which this argument can be supported.  It would undoubtedly be much easier to strike off from the case the delays of two years in proposing the law than to justify them.

It is true that the United States, with a moderation and forbearance for which they receive no credit, waited two years, almost without complaint, for the performance of a treaty which engaged the faith of the French nation to pay a just indemnity, for which they had already waited more than twenty years.  It is true that His Majesty’s Government offered solemn assurances that as soon as the constitution of the country would permit a new attempt would be made to redeem the national pledge given by the treaty.  It is true also that the President of the United States gave credit to those assurances; but it is also true—­and your excellency seems to lose sight of that important uncontested fact—­that formal notice was given that the performance of those promises would be expected according to their letter, and that he could delay no longer than the 1st of December the execution of a duty which those assurances had induced him to postpone.  Whatever reasons His Majesty’s Government had for not complying with Mr. Serurier’s engagement, or however they may have interpreted it, the President could not be precluded from considering the whole case as open and adding to his statement the wrongs occasioned by the delays anterior to the vote of rejection.  Those delays are still unaccounted for, and are rendered more questionable by the preference given to another treaty, although subsequently made, for the guarantee of the Greek loan.

Confining your observations to this second period, you say that the reproaches which the President thinks himself authorized in making to France may be comprised in the following words: 

“The Government of the King had promised to present the treaty of July anew to the Chambers as soon as they could be assembled; but they have been assembled on the 31st of July of the last year and the treaty has not yet been presented.”

Stating this as the whole of the complaint, you proceed, sir, in your endeavor to refute it.

I am obliged, reluctantly, here to make use of arguments which in the course of this discussion have been often repeated, but which seem to have made no impression on His Majesty’s Government.  I am obliged, in repelling the reproaches addressed to the President, to bring to your recollection the terms of the promise on which he relied, the circumstances attending it, and the object for which it was given.  These must be fully understood and fully waived before the question between us can be resolved.