The convention, as expressed in the French language, will fully answer our purposes in France, because it will there be understood.  But it will not equally answer the purposes of France in America, because it will not there be understood.  In very few of the courts, wherein it may be presented, will there be found a single judge or advocate, capable of translating it at all, much less of giving to all its terms, legal and technical, their exact equivalent in the laws and language of that country.  Should any translation which Congress would undertake to publish, for the use of our courts, be conceived on any occasion not to render fully the idea of the French original, it might be imputed as an indirect attempt to abridge or extend the terms of a contract, at the will of one party only.  At no place are there better helps than here, for establishing an English text equivalent to the French, in all its phrases; no persons can be supposed to know what is meant by these phrases, better than those who form them; and no time more proper to ascertain their meaning in both languages than that at which they are formed.  I have, therefore, the honor to propose, that the convention shall be faithfully expressed in English as well as in French, in two columns, side by side, that these columns be declared each of them to be text, and to be equally original and authentic in all courts of justice.

This, Sir, is a general sketch of the alterations, which our laws and our manner of thinking render necessary in this convention, before the faith of our country is engaged for its execution.  Some of its articles, in their present form, could not be executed at all, and others would produce embarrassments and ill humor, to which it would not be prudent for our government to commit itself.  Inexact execution on the one part, would naturally beget dissatisfaction and complaints on the other; and an instrument intended to strengthen our connection, might thus become the means of loosening it.  Fewer articles, better observed, will better promote our common interests.  As to ourselves, we do not find the institution of consuls very necessary.  Its history commences in times of barbarism, and might well have ended with them.  During these, they were, perhaps, useful, and may still be so in countries not yet emerged from that condition.  But all civilized nations at this day understand so well the advantages of commerce, that they provide protection and encouragement for merchant strangers and vessels coming among them.  So extensive, too, have commercial connections now become, that every mercantile house has correspondents in almost every port.  They address their vessels to these correspondents, who are found to take better care of their interests, and to obtain more effectually the protection of the laws of the country for them, than the consul of their nation can.  He is generally a foreigner, unpossessed of the little details of knowledge of greatest use