They are the objections
to this call, then, which immediately demand our attention. What, in
fact, were they? None derived from the constitutional charter have been
or could have been asserted. What, then, were they? Your excellency's
letter of the 3d of August to me contains none but this: "His Majesty's
Government finds it impossible to make any positive engagement on that
point." In that of the 7th of August there are two reasons assigned:
First, the general inconvenience to the members. This the President
could surely not think of alleging to Congress as a sufficient reason
for omitting to lay the matter before them. The next, I confess, has
a little more weight, and might have excused a delay if the assurance
given by Mr. Serurier had been, as your excellency construes it,
merely of a _disposition_ to hasten the presentation of the law.
If the engagement had amounted to no more than this, and His Majesty's
ministers thought that an early call would endanger the passage of
the law, it might possibly justify _them_ in not making it. But the
President, who relied on the promise he had received, who in consequence
of it had deferred the performance of an important duty; the President,
who had given timely and official notice that this duty must be
performed at the opening of the next Congress; the President, who could
see no greater prospect of the passage of the law in a winter than in an
autumnal session--how was _he_ to justify himself and redeem the pledge
_he_ had made to his country? He did it in the way he always does--by a
strict performance.
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