postponed all discussion and
all recrimination on the subject of this first refusal until another
decision should have either repealed or confirmed it. This postponement
therefore sets aside for the time all difficulties arising either justly
or unjustly from the rejection of the treaty or from the delay by which
it had been preceded; and although the message begins by enumerating
them, I think proper, in order to confine myself to the matter in
question, only to reply to the imputations made on account of subsequent
occurrences.

The reproaches which President Jackson considers himself authorized to
address to France may be summed up in a few words. The King's Government
promised to present the treaty of July 4 again to the Chambers as soon
as they could be assembled. They were assembled on the 31st of July, and
the treaty has not yet been presented to them. Such is exactly the whole
substance of the President's argumentation, and nothing can be easier
than to refute it.

I may first observe that the assembling of the Chambers on the 31st of
July, in obedience to a legal prescription that they should be called
together within a stated period after a dissolution of the Chamber of
Deputies, was nothing more than a piece of formality, and if President
Jackson had attended to the internal mechanism of our administrative
system he would have been convinced that the session of 1835 could not
have really commenced at that session of 1834. Everyone knew beforehand
that after a fortnight spent in the forms of installation it would be
adjourned.

The President of the United States considers that the bill relative to
the American claims should have been presented to the Chamber within
that fortnight. I can not understand the propriety of this reproach. The
bill was explicitly announced in the speech from the throne on the very
day on which the Chambers met. This was all that was required to make
known the opinion and design of the Government, and to prevent that
species of moral proscription to which absolute silence would have given
authority. With regard to the mere act of presentation so long before
discussion could possibly take place, this proceeding would have been so
unusual and extraordinary that it might have increased the unfavorable
prepossessions of the public, already too numerous, without producing
any real advantage in return. Above all, the result which the President
had in view, of being able to announce the n