ose with which the United States have important
relations, can not but render the state of things between them and us
matter of interesting inquiry to the Legislature, and may indeed give
rise to deliberations to which they alone are competent, I have thought
it my duty to communicate to them certain correspondences which have
taken place.

The representative and executive bodies of France have manifested
generally a friendly attachment to this country; have given advantages
to our commerce and navigation, and have made overtures for placing
these advantages on permanent ground. A decree, however, of the National
Assembly subjecting vessels laden with provisions to be carried into
their ports and making enemy goods lawful prize in the vessel of a
friend, contrary to our treaty, though revoked at one time as to the
United States, has been since extended to their vessels also, as has
been recently stated to us. Representations on this subject will be
immediately given in charge to our minister there, and the result
shall be communicated to the Legislature.

It is with extreme concern I have to inform you that the proceedings
of the person whom they have unfortunately appointed their minister
plenipotentiary here have breathed nothing of the friendly spirit of
the nation which sent him. Their tendency, on the contrary, has been to
involve us in war abroad and discord and anarchy at home. So far as his
acts or those of his agents have threatened our immediate commitment in
the war, or flagrant insult to the authority of the laws, their effect
has been counteracted by the ordinary cognizance of the laws and by an
exertion of the powers confided to me. Where their danger was not
imminent they have been borne with from sentiments of regard to his
nation, from a sense of their friendship toward us, from a conviction
that they would not suffer us to remain long exposed to the action of a
person who has so little respected our mutual dispositions, and, I will
add, from a reliance on the firmness of my fellow-citizens in their
principles of peace and order. In the meantime I have respected and
pursued the stipulations of our treaties according to what I judged
their true sense, and have withheld no act of friendship which their
affairs have called for from us, and which justice to others left us
free to perform. I have gone farther. Rather than employ force for the
restitution of certain vessels which I deemed the United States b