Facts may be denied, deductions
examined, disproved, and condemned, without just cause of offense; but
no impeachment of the integrity of the Government in its reliance
on the correctness of its own views can be permitted without a total
forgetfulness of self-respect. In the sentence quoted from M. Serurier's
letter no exception is taken to the assertion that the complaints of
this Government are founded upon allegations entirely inexact, nor upon
that which declares the explanations given here or in Paris appeared,
not to have left even the possibility of a misunderstanding on such
delicate points. The correctness of these assertions we shall always
dispute, and while the records of the two Governments endure we shall
find no difficulty in shewing that they are groundless; but when M.
Serurier chooses to qualify the nonaccomplishment of the engagements
made by France, to which the President refers, as a _pretended_
nonaccomplishment, he conveys the idea that the Chief Magistrate knows
or believes that he is in error, and acting upon this known error seeks
to impose it upon Congress and the world as truth.
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