While the ratification of this treaty was pending, the United States minister to France, Lewis Cass, addressed an official note to Guizot at the French foreign office, protesting against the institution of an international Right of Search, and rather grandiloquently warning the powers against the use of force to accomplish their ends.[59] This extraordinary epistle, issued on the minister’s own responsibility, brought a reply denying that the creation of any “new principle of international law, whereby the vessels even of those powers which have not participated in the arrangement should be subjected to the right of search,” was ever intended, and affirming that no such extraordinary interpretation could be deduced from the Convention.  Moreover, M. Guizot hoped that the United States, by agreeing to this treaty, would “aid, by its most sincere endeavors, in the definitive abolition of the trade."[60] Cass’s theatrical protest was, consciously or unconsciously, the manifesto of that growing class in the United States who wanted no further measures taken for the suppression of the slave-trade; toward that, as toward the institution of slavery, this party favored a policy of strict laissez-faire.

73. Final Concerted Measures, 1842-1862. The Treaty of Washington, in 1842, made the first effective compromise in the matter and broke the unpleasant dead-lock, by substituting joint cruising by English and American squadrons for the proposed grant of a Right of Search.  In submitting this treaty, Tyler said:  “The treaty which I now submit to you proposes no alteration, mitigation, or modification of the rules of the law of nations.  It provides simply that each of the two Governments shall maintain on the coast of Africa a sufficient squadron to enforce separately and respectively the laws, rights, and obligations of the two countries for the suppression of the slave trade."[61] This provision was a part of the treaty to settle the boundary disputes with England.  In the Senate, Benton moved to strike out this article; but the attempt was defeated by a vote of 37 to 12, and the treaty was ratified.[62]

This stipulation of the treaty of 1842 was never properly carried out by the United States for any length of time.[63] Consequently the same difficulties as to search and visit by English vessels continued to recur.  Cases like the following were frequent.  The “Illinois,” of Gloucester, Massachusetts, while lying at Whydah, Africa, was boarded by a British officer, but having American papers was unmolested.  Three days later she hoisted Spanish colors and sailed away with a cargo of slaves.  Next morning she fell in with another British vessel and hoisted American colors; the British ship had then no right to molest her; but the captain of the slaver feared that she would, and therefore ran his vessel aground, slaves and all.  The senior English officer reported that “had Lieutenant Cumberland brought to and boarded the ‘Illinois,’