The government thought no skilfully extorted promises necessary in any such cases.  It asks no such pledges of any nation.  If its character for ability and readiness to protect and defend its own rights and dignity is not sufficient to preserve them from violation, no interpolation of promise to respect them, ingeniously woven into treaties, would be likely to afford such protection.  And as our rights and liberties depend for existence upon our power to maintain them, general and vague protests are not likely to be more effectual than the Chinese method of defending their towns, by painting grotesque and hideous figures on the walls to fright away assailing foes.

My other remark on this portion of your letter is this:—­

Suppose a declaration to the effect that this treaty should not be considered as sacrificing any American rights had been appended, and the treaty, thus fortified, had been sent to Great Britain, as you propose; and suppose that that government, with equal ingenuity, had appended an equivalent written declaration that it should not be considered as sacrificing any British right, how much more defined would have been the rights of either party, or how much clearer the meaning and interpretation of the treaty, by these reservations on both sides?  Or, in other words, what is the value of a protest on one side, balanced by an exactly equivalent protest on the other?

No nation is presumed to sacrifice its rights, or give up what justly belongs to it, unless it expressly stipulates that, for some good reason or adequate consideration, it does make such relinquishment; and an unnecessary asseveration that it does not intend to sacrifice just rights would seem only calculated to invite aggression.  Such proclamations would seem better devised for concealing weakness and apprehension, than for manifesting conscious strength and self-reliance, or for inspiring respect in others.

Toward the end of your letter you are pleased to observe:  “The rejection of a treaty, duly negotiated, is a serious question, to be avoided whenever it can be without too great a sacrifice.  Though the national faith is not actually committed, still it is more or less engaged.  And there were peculiar circumstances, growing out of long-standing difficulties, which rendered an amicable arrangement of the various matters in dispute with England a subject of great national interest.  But the negotiation of a treaty is a far different subject.  Topics are omitted or introduced at the discretion of the negotiators, and they are responsible, to use the language of an eminent and able Senator, for ‘what it contains and what it omits.’  This treaty, in my opinion, omits a most important and necessary stipulation; and therefore, as it seems to me, its negotiation, in this particular, was unfortunate for the country.”

The President directs me to say, in reply to this, that in the treaty of Washington no topics were omitted, and no topics introduced, at the mere discretion of the negotiator; that the negotiation proceeded from step to step, and from day to day, under his own immediate supervision and direction; that he himself takes the responsibility for what the treaty contains and what it omits, and cheerfully leaves the merits of the whole to the judgment of the country.