rstood, the
important object for which it was given, and the serious consequences
that might attend a failure to comply with it, were urged in
conversation, and repeated in my official letters, particularly those
of the 26th and 29th of July and 3d and 9th of August last, in which
its performance was strongly pressed.

The answers to these letters left no hope that the question would be
submitted to the Chambers in time to have the result known before the
adjournment of Congress, and by the refusal to hasten the convocation of
the Chambers before the last of December showed unequivocally that, so
far from taking all measures permitted by the constitution to _hasten_
the period of presenting the law, it was to be left to the most remote
period of the ordinary course of legislation.

This decision of His Majesty's Government, contained in your
excellency's note to me of the 7th August, was duly transmitted to the
President, and it naturally produced upon his mind the impressions which
I anticipated in my letters to your excellency that it would produce.
He saw with the deepest regret that a positive assurance for convening
the Chambers as soon as the constitution would permit was construed to
mean only a disposition to do so, and that this disposition had yielded
to objections which he could not think of sufficient force to justify a
delay even if there had intervened no promise, especially as the serious
consequences of that delay had been earnestly and repeatedly brought to
the consideration of His Majesty's Government. In fact, sir, what were
those objections? I do not speak of those which were made to presenting
the law in the session of July last, for although no constitutional
impediment offered itself, yet it was not strongly insisted on, because
an early session in the autumn, would have the same effect; and the
President, for the same reason, says that it might have been overlooked
if an early call of the Chambers had been made. They are the objections
to this call, then, which immediately demand our attention. What, in
fact, were they? None derived from the constitutional charter have been
or could have been asserted. What, then, were they? Your excellency's
letter of the 3d of August to me contains none but this: "His Majesty's
Government finds it impossible to make any positive engagement on that
point." In that of the 7th of August there are two reasons assigned:
First, the general inconvenience to the membe