"
Obliged by the precise language thus used by the French minister to
view it as a peremptory refusal to execute the treaty except on terms
incompatible with the honor and independence of the United States, and
persuaded that on considering the correspondence now submitted to you
you can regard it in no other light, it becomes my duty to call your
attention to such measures as the exigency of the case demands if the
claim of interfering in the communications between the different
branches of our Government shall be persisted in. This pretension is
rendered the more unreasonable by the fact that the substance of the
required explanation has been repeatedly and voluntarily given before it
was insisted on as a condition--a condition the more humiliating because
it is demanded as the equivalent of a pecuniary consideration. Does
France desire only a declaration that we had no intention to obtain our
rights by an address to her fears rather than to her justice? She has
already had it, frankly and explicitly given by our minister accredited
to her Government, his act ratified by me, and my confirmation of it
officially communicated by him in his letter to the French minister
of foreign affairs of the 25th of April, 1835, and repeated by my
published approval of that letter after the passage of the bill of
indemnification.
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