For the President's satisfaction, and for his justification too, an
engagement was offered and accepted for the performance of an act which
depended on His Majesty's Government alone. This engagement was couched
in the unequivocal terms I have literally quoted.
This, sir, is not all. That there might be no misunderstanding on the
subject, this promise, with the sense in which it was understood, the
important object for which it was given, and the serious consequences
that might attend a failure to comply with it, were urged in
conversation, and repeated in my official letters, particularly those
of the 26th and 29th of July and 3d and 9th of August last, in which
its performance was strongly pressed.
The answers to these letters left no hope that the question would be
submitted to the Chambers in time to have the result known before the
adjournment of Congress, and by the refusal to hasten the convocation of
the Chambers before the last of December showed unequivocally that, so
far from taking all measures permitted by the constitution to _hasten_
the period of presenting the law, it was to be left to the most remote
period of the ordinary course of legislation.
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