In accordance with this view of the Federal Constitution has been the
practice under it. The statements and recommendations of the President
to Congress are regarded by this Government as a part of the purely
domestic consultations held by its different departments--consultations
in which nothing is addressed to foreign powers, and in which they can
not be permitted to interfere, and for which, until consummated and
carried out by acts emanating from the proper constitutional organs,
the nation is not responsible and the Government not liable to account
to other States.
It will be seen from the accompanying correspondence that when the
condition referred to was first proposed in the Chamber of Deputies the
insuperable objections to it were fully communicated by the American
minister at Paris to the French Government, and that he distinctly
informed it that the condition, if prescribed, could never be complied
with. The views expressed by him were approved by the President, and
have been since twice asserted and enforced by him in his messages to
Congress in terms proportioned in their explicitness and solemnity to
the conviction he entertains of the importance and inviolability of the
principle involved.
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