inasmuch as the reduction of the duties levied on French wines in pursuance of that treaty has diminished the public revenue, and has been and yet is enjoyed by France, with all the other benefits of the treaty, without the consideration and equivalents for which they were granted.  But there are other national interests, and, in the judgment of this Government, national interests of the highest order, involved in the condition prescribed and insisted on by France which it has been by the President made the duty of the undersigned to bring distinctly into view.  That condition proceeds on the assumption that a foreign power whose acts are spoken of by the President of the United States in a message to Congress, transmitted in obedience to his constitutional duties, and which deems itself aggrieved by the language thus held by him, may as a matter of right require from the Government of the United States a direct official explanation of such language, to be given in such form and expressed in such terms as shall meet the requirements and satisfy the feelings of the offended party, and may in default of such explanation annul or suspend a solemn treaty duly executed by its constitutional organ.  Whatever may be the responsibility of those nations whose executives possess the power of declaring war and of adopting other coercive remedies without the intervention of the legislative department, for the language held by the Executive in addressing that department, it is obvious that under the Constitution of the United States, which gives to the Executive no such powers, but vests them exclusively in the Legislature, whilst at the same time it imposes on the Executive the duty of laying before the Legislature the state of the nation, with such recommendations as he may deem proper, no such responsibility can be admitted without impairing that freedom of intercommunication which is essential to the system and without surrendering in this important particular the right of self-government.  In accordance with this view of the Federal Constitution has been the practice under it.  The statements and recommendations of the President to Congress are regarded by this Government as a part of the purely domestic consultations held by its different departments—­consultations in which nothing is addressed to foreign powers, and in which they can not be permitted to interfere, and for which, until consummated and carried out by acts emanating from the proper constitutional organs, the nation is not responsible and the Government not liable to account to other States.

It will be seen from the accompanying correspondence that when the condition referred to was first proposed in the Chamber of Deputies the insuperable objections to it were fully communicated by the American minister at Paris to the French Government, and that he distinctly informed it that the condition, if prescribed, could never be complied with.  The views expressed by him were approved by the President, and have been since twice asserted and enforced by him in his messages to Congress in terms proportioned in their explicitness and solemnity to the conviction he entertains of the importance and inviolability of the principle involved.