This is not the first time that the Government of France has taken exception to the messages of American Presidents.  President Washington and the first President Adams in the performance of their duties to the American people fell under the animadversions of the French Directory.  The objection taken by the ministry of Charles X, and removed by the explanation made by our minister upon the spot, has already been adverted to.  When it was understood that the ministry of the present King took exception to my message of last year, putting a construction upon it which was disavowed on its face, our late minister at Paris, in answer to the note which first announced a dissatisfaction with the language used in the message, made a communication to the French Government under date of the 29th of January, 1835, calculated to remove all impressions which an unreasonable susceptibility had created.  He repeated and called the attention of the French Government to the disavowal contained in the message itself of any intention to intimidate by menace; he truly declared that it contained and was intended to contain no charge of ill faith against the King of the French, and properly distinguished between the right to complain in unexceptionable terms of the omission to execute an agreement and an accusation of bad motives in withholding such execution, and demonstrated that the necessary use of that right ought not to be considered as an offensive imputation.

Although this communication was made without instructions and entirely on the minister’s own responsibility, yet it was afterwards made the act of this Government by my full approbation, and that approbation was officially made known on the 25th of April, 1835, to the French Government.  It, however, failed to have any effect.  The law, after this friendly explanation, passed with the obnoxious amendment, supported by the King’s ministers, and was finally approved by the King.

The people of the United States are justly attached to a pacific system in their intercourse with foreign nations.  It is proper, therefore, that they should know whether their Government has adhered to it.  In the present instance it has been carried to the utmost extent that was consistent with a becoming self-respect.  The note of the 29th of January, to which I have before alluded, was not the only one which our minister took upon himself the responsibility of presenting on the same subject and in the same spirit.

Finding that it was intended to make the payment of a just debt dependent on the performance of a condition which he knew could never be complied with, he thought it a duty to make another attempt to convince the French Government that whilst self-respect and regard to the dignity of other nations would always prevent us from using any language that ought to give offense, yet we could never admit a right in any foreign government to ask explanations of or to interfere in any manner