t is
worthy the Chief Magistrate of a free people to make known to the world
that justice on the part of France will annihilate every obstacle to the
restoration of a friendly intercourse, and that the Executive authority
of this country will respect the sacred rights of embassy. At the same
time, the wisdom and decision which have characterized your past
Administration assure us that no illusory professions will seduce you
into any abandonment of the rights which belong to the United States as
a free and independent nation.

December 13, 1798.

REPLY OF THE PRESIDENT.

DECEMBER 14, 1798.

_To the House of Representatives of the United States of America_.

GENTLEMEN: My sincere acknowledgments are due to the House of
Representatives of the United States for this excellent address so
consonant to the character of representatives of a great and free
people. The judgment and feelings of a nation, I believe, were never
more truly expressed by their representatives than those of our
constituents by your decided declaration that with our means of defense
our interest and honor command us to repel a predatory warfare against
the unquestionable rights of neutral commerce; that it becomes the
United States to be as determined in resistance as they have been
patient in suffering and condescending in negotiation; that while those
who direct the affairs of France persist in the enforcement of decrees
so hostile to our essential rights their conduct forbids us to confide
in any of their professions of amity; that an adequate naval force
must be considered as an important object of national policy, and
that, whether negotiations with France are resumed or not, vigorous
preparations for war will be alike indispensable.

The generous disdain you so coolly and deliberately express of a
reliance on foreign protection, wanting no foreign guaranty of our
liberties, resolving to maintain our national independence against every
attempt to despoil us of this inestimable treasure, will meet the full
approbation of every sound understanding and exulting applauses from the
heart of every faithful American.

I thank you, gentlemen, for your candid approbation of my sentiments on
the subject of negotiation and for the declaration of your opinion that
the policy of extending and invigorating our measures of defense and the
adoption with prudent foresight of such systematical measures as may be
expedient for calling forth the energies