From this detail your excellency will, I hope, see that the President's
causes of complaint can not, as you suppose, be confined within the
narrow limit you have assigned to them. The failure to present the law
in the session of July was not the only, nor even the principal, point
in which he thought the engagement of Mr. Serurier uncomplied with;
for although he saw no reason for the omission that could be called
a constitutional one, yet he expressly says that might have been
overlooked. He always (it can not too often be repeated) looked to the
promise of Mr. Serurier as it was given at Washington, not as it was
interpreted at Paris, and he had a right to believe that as on previous
occasions the Legislature had, in the years 1819, 1822, 1825, and 1830,
held their sessions for the transaction of the ordinary business in
the months of July and August, he had a right, I say, to believe that
there was no insurmountable objection to the consideration of this
extraordinary case, enforced by a positive promise. Yet, as I have
remarked, he did not make this his principal cause of complaint; it
was the omission to call the Chambers at an earlier period than the
very end of the year.
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