An honorable susceptibility to everything that may in the remotest degree affect the honor of the country is a national sentiment in France; but you will allow, sir, that it is carried too far when it becomes impatient of just complaint, when it will allow none of its acts to be arraigned and considers as an offense a simple and correct examination of injuries received and as an insult a deliberation on the means of redress.  If it is forbidden, under the penalties of giving just cause of offense, for the different branches of a foreign government to consult together on the nature of wrongs it has received and review the several remedies which the law of nations present and circumstances justify, then no such consultation can take place in a government like that of the United States, where all the proceedings are public, without at once incurring the risk of war, which it would be the very object of that consultation to avoid.

The measures announced in the close of your letter, as well as the correspondence that it has occasioned between us, have been transmitted to my Government, and I wait the instructions which that communication will produce.

I pray your excellency to receive the renewed assurance of the high consideration with which I have the honor to be, your most obedient, humble servant,

EDW.  LIVINGSTON.

[Indorsement.]

This letter was referred to in my message of the 7th of December last, and ought to have been then transmitted with that of the 25th of April, but by some oversight it was omitted.

A.J.

WASHINGTON, January 18, 1836.

To the Senate of the United States: 

In compliance with the resolution of the Senate of the 12th instant, I transmit a report of the Secretary of State, with the papers therein referred to, which, with those accompanying the special message this day sent to Congress, are believed to contain all the information requested.  The papers relative to the letter of the late minister of France have been added to those called for, that the subject may be fully understood.

ANDREW JACKSON.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, January 13, 1836.

The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: 

The Secretary of State has the honor to lay before the President a copy of a report made to him in June last, and of a letter addressed to this Department by the late minister of the Government of France, with the correspondence connected with that communication, which, together with a late correspondence between the Secretary of State and the French charge d’affaires and a recent correspondence between the charge d’affaires of the United States at Paris and the Duke de Broglie, already transmitted to the President to be communicated to Congress with his special message relative thereto, are the only papers in the Department of State supposed to be called for by the resolutions of the Senate of the 12th instant.