To the Senate of the United States: 

In answer to your resolution of the 19th December last, I herewith transmit a letter[138] from the Secretary of State and the accompanying documents.

JOHN TYLER.

[Footnote 138:  Transmitting copies of treaties between the Republic of Texas and Great Britain and France.]

WASHINGTON, January 9, 1845.

To the House of Representatives: 

I herewith transmit to the House of Representatives, in reply to their resolution of the 14th of June last, a report from the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers.[139]

JOHN TYLER.

[Footnote 139:  Copy of the instructions to George W. Erving upon his appointment as minister to Spain in 1814 and during his mission to that Court.]

WASHINGTON, January 9, 1845.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I transmit herewith additional documents having relation to the treaty with China, which may enable the Senate more satisfactorily to act upon it.

JOHN TYLER.

WASHINGTON, January 22, 1845.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: 

I communicate herewith an abstract of the treaty between the United States of America and the Chinese Empire concluded at Wang-Hiya on the 3d of July last, and ratified by the Senate on the 16th instant, and which, having also been ratified by the Emperor of China, now awaits only the exchange of the ratifications in China, from which it will be seen that the special mission authorized by Congress for this purpose has fully succeeded in the accomplishment so far of the great objects for which it was appointed, and in placing our relations with China on a new footing eminently favorable to the commerce and other interests of the United States.

In view of the magnitude and importance of our national concerns, actual and prospective, in China, I submit to the consideration of Congress the expediency of providing for the preservation and cultivation of the subsisting relations of amity between the United States and the Chinese Government, either by means of a permanent minister or commissioner with diplomatic functions, as in the case of certain of the Mohammedan States.  It appears by one of the extracts annexed that the establishment of the British Government in China consists both of a plenipotentiary and also of paid consuls for all the five ports, one of whom has the title and exercises the functions of consul-general; and France has also a salaried consul-general, and the interests of the United States seem in like manner to call for some representative in China of a higher class than an ordinary commercial consulate.