All which is respectfully submitted, with the hope, if the course pursued is approved by the President, that this report may be filed in this Department with the letters to which it refers.

JOHN FORSYTH.

Mr. Forsyth to Mr. Livingston.

No. 50.

[Extract.]

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, March 5, 1835.

EDWARD LIVINGSTON, Esq.,

Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, Paris.

SIR:  In my note No. 49 you were informed that the last letter of M. Serurier would be made the subject of separate and particular instructions to you.  Unwilling to add to the irritation produced by recent incidents in our relations with France, the President will not take for granted that the very exceptionable language of the French minister was used by the orders or will be countenanced by the authority of the King of France.  You will therefore, as early as practicable after this reaches you, call the attention of the minister of foreign affairs to the following passage in M. Serurier’s letter: 

“Les plaintes que porte M. le President centre le pretendu non-accomplissement des engagemens pris par le Gouvernement du Roi a la suite du vote du 1er avril 1834, ne sont pas seulement etrange par l’entiere inexactitude des allegations sur lesquelles elles reposent, mais aussi parceque les explications qu’a recues a Paris M. Livingston, et celles que le soussigne a donnees directement an cabinet de Washington semblaient ne pas laisser meme la possibilite d’un malentendu sur des points aussi delicats.”

In all discussions between government and government, whatever may be the differences of opinion on the facts or principles brought into view, the invariable rule of courtesy and justice demands that the sincerity of the opposing party in the views which it entertains should never be called in question.  Facts may be denied, deductions examined, disproved, and condemned, without just cause of offense; but no impeachment of the integrity of the Government in its reliance on the correctness of its own views can be permitted without a total forgetfulness of self-respect.  In the sentence quoted from M. Serurier’s letter no exception is taken to the assertion that the complaints of this Government are founded upon allegations entirely inexact, nor upon that which declares the explanations given here or in Paris appeared, not to have left even the possibility of a misunderstanding on such delicate points.  The correctness of these assertions we shall always dispute, and while the records of the two Governments endure we shall find no difficulty in shewing that they are groundless; but when M. Serurier chooses to qualify the nonaccomplishment of the engagements made by France, to which the President refers, as a pretended nonaccomplishment, he conveys the idea that the Chief Magistrate knows or believes that