Both powers had ministers on the spot, and the dignity of
neither seems to have been offended.
If the view I have now taken of the subject be correct; if I have
succeeded in conveying to His Majesty's ministers the conviction
I myself feel that no right exists in any foreign nation to ask
explanations of or even to notice any communications between the
different branches of our Government; that to admit it even in a single
instance would be a dangerous precedent and a derogation from national
dignity, and that in the present instance an explanation that ought to
be satisfactory has been voluntarily given, I have then demonstrated
that any measure founded on such supposed right is not only
inadmissible, but is totally unnecessary, and consequently that His
Majesty's ministers may at once declare that previous explanations given
by the minister of the United States, and subsequently approved by the
President, had satisfied them on the subject of the message.
The motives of my Government during the whole course of this
controversy have been misunderstood or not properly appreciated, and the
question is daily changing its character.
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