Serurier that the statement of
facts contained in the President's message is inaccurate, and that
the causes assigned for the delay in presenting the law ought to
have satisfied them. On their part they contest the facts, deny the
accuracy of the conclusions, and appeal to the record, to reason, and
to the sense of justice of His Majesty's Government on a more mature
consideration of the case for their justification. But I am further
instructed to say that there is one expression in the passage I have
quoted which in one signification could not be admitted even within the
broad limits which are allowed to discussions of this nature, and which,
therefore, the President will not believe to have been used in the
offensive sense that might be attributed to it. The word "_pretendu_"
sometimes, it is believed, in French, and its translation always in
English, implies not only that the assertion which it qualifies is
untrue, but that the party making it knows it to be so and uses it
for the purposes of deception.
Although the President can not believe that the term was employed in
this injurious sense, yet the bare possibility of a construction being
put upon it which it would be incumbent on him to repel with indignation
obliges him to ask for the necessary explanation.
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