r communication may have been received from the British
Government respecting the President's construction of the late British
treaty concluded at Washington as it concerns an alleged right to visit
American vessels," I herewith transmit a report made to me by the
Secretary of State.

I have also thought proper to communicate copies of Lord Aberdeen's
letter of the 20th December, 1841, to Mr. Everett, Mr. Everett's letter
of the 23d December in reply thereto, and extracts from several letters
of Mr. Everett to the Secretary of State.

I can not forego the expression of my regret at the apparent purport of
a part of Lord Aberdeen's dispatch to Mr. Fox. I had cherished the hope
that all possibility of misunderstanding as to the true construction of
the eighth article of the treaty lately concluded between Great Britain
and the United States was precluded by the plain and well-weighed
language in which it is expressed. The desire of both Governments is to
put an end as speedily as possible to the slave trade, and that desire,
I need scarcely add, is as strongly and as sincerely felt by the United
States as it can be by Great Britain. Yet it must not be forgotten
that the trade, though now universally reprobated, was up to a late
period prosecuted by all who chose to engage in it, and there were
unfortunately but very few Christian powers whose subjects were not
permitted, and even encouraged, to share in the profits of what was
regarded as a perfectly legitimate commerce. It originated at a period
long before the United States had become independent and was carried on
within our borders in opposition to the most earnest remonstrances and
expostulations of some of the colonies in which it was most actively
prosecuted. Those engaged in it were as little liable to inquiry or
interruption as any others. Its character, thus fixed by common consent
and general practice, could only be changed by the positive assent of
each and every nation, expressed either in the form of municipal law
or conventional arrangement. The United States led the way in efforts
to suppress it. They claimed no right to dictate to others, but they
resolved, without waiting for the cooperation of other powers, to
prohibit it to their own citizens and to visit its perpetration by them
with condign punishment. I may safely affirm that it never occurred
to this Government that any new maritime right accrued to it from the
position it had thus assumed in rega