What, then, was this engagement?  First, that the Government of the King will use every legal and constitutional effort which its persevering persuasion of the justice and advantages of the treaty authorize the United States to expect from it.  “Son intention est” (I quote literally), “en outre” (that is, besides using those endeavors above mentioned), “de faire tout ce que not re constitution permet pour rapprocher autant que possible l’epoque de la presentation nouvelle de la loi rejettee.”  Your excellency can not fail to have observed two distinct parts in this engagement—­one relating to the endeavors the ministry promise to make in order to induce the Chambers to pass the law, for the success of which they could not answer; another relating to the time of presentation of the law, a matter which depended on them alone, restricted only by constitutional forms.

The promise on this point, then, was precise, and could not be misunderstood.  Whatever the constitution of France permitted, the Government of France promised to do in order to hasten the presentation of the law.  What was the cause of this desire to bring the business before the Chambers at an early day?  No one can doubt it who knows the situation of the two countries, still less anyone who has read the correspondence.  It was to enable the President to make those statements to the next Congress which, relying on the engagements of the French minister, he had omitted to make to this.

It was clear, therefore, that more was required than the expression of a desire on the part of His Majesty’s ministers to execute the treaty—­a desire the sincerity of which was not doubted, but which might be unavailing, as its accomplishment depended on the vote of the Chambers.  For the President’s satisfaction, and for his justification too, an engagement was offered and accepted for the performance of an act which depended on His Majesty’s Government alone.  This engagement was couched in the unequivocal terms I have literally quoted.

This, sir, is not all.  That there might be no misunderstanding on the subject, this promise, with the sense in which it was understood, the important object for which it was given, and the serious consequences that might attend a failure to comply with it, were urged in conversation, and repeated in my official letters, particularly those of the 26th and 29th of July and 3d and 9th of August last, in which its performance was strongly pressed.

The answers to these letters left no hope that the question would be submitted to the Chambers in time to have the result known before the adjournment of Congress, and by the refusal to hasten the convocation of the Chambers before the last of December showed unequivocally that, so far from taking all measures permitted by the constitution to hasten the period of presenting the law, it was to be left to the most remote period of the ordinary course of legislation.