From this detail your excellency will, I hope, see that the President’s causes of complaint can not, as you suppose, be confined within the narrow limit you have assigned to them.  The failure to present the law in the session of July was not the only, nor even the principal, point in which he thought the engagement of Mr. Serurier uncomplied with; for although he saw no reason for the omission that could be called a constitutional one, yet he expressly says that might have been overlooked.  He always (it can not too often be repeated) looked to the promise of Mr. Serurier as it was given at Washington, not as it was interpreted at Paris, and he had a right to believe that as on previous occasions the Legislature had, in the years 1819, 1822, 1825, and 1830, held their sessions for the transaction of the ordinary business in the months of July and August, he had a right, I say, to believe that there was no insurmountable objection to the consideration of this extraordinary case, enforced by a positive promise.  Yet, as I have remarked, he did not make this his principal cause of complaint; it was the omission to call the Chambers at an earlier period than the very end of the year.

On this head your excellency is pleased to observe that the same reasons, drawn from the usual course of administration, which rendered the presentation of the law in the session of July impossible applied with nearly the same force to a call before the end of the year; and you appeal to the President’s knowledge of the “fixed principles of a constitutional system” to prove that the administration under such a government is subject to regular and permanent forms, “from which no special interest, however important, should induce it to deviate.”  For this branch of the argument it unfortunately happens that no regular form of administration, no fixed principle, no usage whatever, would have opposed a call of the Chambers at an early day, and the rule which your excellency states would not be broken “in favor of any interest, however important,” has actually been made to yield to one of domestic occurrence. The Chambers have just been convened before the period which was declared to be the soonest at which they could possibly meet.  Your excellency will also excuse me for remarking that since the first institution of the Chambers, in 1814, there have been convocations for every month of the year, without exception, which I will take the liberty of bringing to your recollection by enumerating the different dates.  The Chambers were summoned for the month of January in the years 1823, 1826, and 1829; for February, in the years 1827 and 1829; for March, in 1815, 1824, and 1830; for April, in 1833; for May, in 1814; for June, in 1815, 1822, and 1825; for July, in 1834; for August, in 1830 and 1831; for September, in 1815; for October, in 1816; for November, in 1817, 1818, 1819, 1821, and 1832; and for December, in 1820, 1824, 1826, and 1833.  It is, then, clear to demonstration