LEWIS CASS, ESQ., &c., &c., &c.
* * * * *
_Mr. F. Webster to General Cass._
Department of State, Washington,
October 11, 1842.
Sir,--I have to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch of the 17th of
September last, requesting permission to return home.
I have submitted the despatch to the President, and am by him directed
to say, that although he much regrets that your own wishes should, at
this time, terminate your mission to the court of France, where for a
long period you have rendered your country distinguished service, in all
instances to its honor and to the satisfaction of the government, and
where you occupy so favorable a position, from the more than ordinary
good intelligence which is understood to subsist between you,
personally, and the members of the French government, and from the
esteem entertained for you by its illustrious head; yet he cannot refuse
your request to return once more to your home and your country, so that
you can pay that attention to your personal and private affairs which
your long absence and constant employment in the service of your
government may now render most necessary.
I have, Sir, to tender you, on behalf of the President, his most cordial
good wishes, and am, &c.
FLETCHER WEBSTER,
_Acting Secretary of State_.
LEWIS CASS, ESQ., &c., &c., &c.
* * * * *
_Mr. Webster to General Cass._
Department of State, Washington,
November 14, 1842.
Sir,--I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch of
the 3d of October, brought by the "Great Western," which arrived at New
York on the 6th instant.
It is probable you will have embarked for the United States before my
communication can now reach you; but as it is thought proper that your
letter should be answered, and as circumstances may possibly have
occurred to delay your departure, this will be transmitted to Paris in
the ordinary way.
Your letter has caused the President considerable concern. Entertaining
a lively sense of the respectable and useful manner in which you have
discharged, for several years, the duties of an important foreign
mission, it occasions him real regret and pain, that your last official
communication should be of such a character as that he cannot give to it
his entire and cordial approbation.
It appears to be intended as a sort of protest, a remonstrance, in the
form of an official despatch, against a transaction of the government to
which you were not a party, in which you had no agency whatever, and for
the results of which you were no way answerable. This would seem an
unusual and extraordinary proceeding. In common with every other citizen
of the republic, you have an unquestionable right to form opinions upon
public transactions, and the conduct of public men; but it will hardly
be thought to be among either the duties or the privileges of a minister
abroad to make formal remonstrances and protests against proceedings of
the various branches of the government at home, upon subjects in
relation to which he himself has not been charged with any duty or
partaken any responsibility.
The negotiation and conclusion of the treaty of Washington were in the
hands of the President and Senate. They had acted upon this important
subject according to their convictions of duty and of the public
interest, and had ratified the treaty. It was a thing done; and although
your opinion might be at variance with that of the President and Senate,
it is not perceived that you had any cause of complaint, remonstrance,
or protest, more than any other citizen who might entertain the same
opinion.
In your letter of the 17th of September, requesting your recall, you
observe: "The mail by the steam-packet which left Boston the 1st instant
has just arrived, and has brought intelligence of the ratification of
the treaties recently concluded with Great Britain. All apprehensions,
therefore, of any immediate difficulties with that country are at an
end, and I do not see that any public interest demands my further
residence in Europe. I can no longer be useful here, and the state of
my private affairs requires my presence at home. Under these
circumstances, I beg you to submit to the President my wish for
permission to retire from this mission, and to return to the United
States without delay."
As you appeared at that time not to be acquainted with the provisions of
the treaty, it was inferred that your desire to return home proceeded
from the conviction _that, inasmuch as all apprehensions of immediate
differences with Great Britain were at an end_, you would no longer be
useful at Paris. Placing this interpretation on your letter, and
believing, as you yourself allege, that your long absence abroad
rendered it desirable for you to give some attention to your private
affairs in this country, the President lost no time in yielding to your
request, and, in doing so, signified to you the sentiments of
approbation which he entertained for your conduct abroad. You may, then,
well imagine the great astonishment which the declaration contained in
your despatch of the 3d of October, that you could no longer remain in
France honorably to yourself or advantageously to the country, and that
the proceedings of this government had placed you in a false position,
from which you could escape only by returning home, created in his mind.
The President perceives not the slightest foundation for these opinions.
He cannot see how your usefulness as minister to France should be
terminated by the settlement of difficulties and disputes between the
United States and Great Britain. You have been charged with no duties
connected with the settlement of these questions, or in any way relating
to them, beyond the communication to the French government of the
President's approbation of your letter of the 13th of February, written
without previous instructions from this department. This government is
not informed of any other act or proceeding of yours connected with any
part of the subject, nor does it know that your official conduct and
character have become in any other way connected with the question of
the right of search; and that letter having been approved, and the
French government having been so informed, the President is altogether
at a loss to understand how you can regard yourself as placed in a false
position. If the character or conduct of any one was to be affected, it
could only be the character and conduct of the President himself. The
government has done nothing, most assuredly, to place you in a false
position. Representing your country at a foreign court, you saw a
transaction about to take place between the government to which you were
accredited and another power, which you thought might have a prejudicial
effect on the interest of your own country. Thinking, as it is to be
presumed, that the case was too pressing to wait for instructions, you
presented a protest against that transaction, and our government
approved your proceeding. This is your only official connection with the
whole subject. If after this the President had sanctioned the
negotiation of a treaty, and the Senate had ratified it, containing
provisions in the highest degree objectionable, however the government
might be discredited, your exemption from all blame and censure would
have been complete. Having delivered your letter of the 13th of February
to the French government, and having received the President's
approbation of that proceeding, it is most manifest that you could be in
no degree responsible for what should be done afterward, and done by
others. The President, therefore, cannot conceive what particular or
personal interest of yours was affected by the subsequent negotiation
here, or how the treaty, the result of that negotiation, should put an
end to your usefulness as a public minister at the court of France, or
in any way affect your official character or conduct.
It is impossible not to see that such a proceeding as you have seen fit
to adopt might produce much inconvenience, and even serious prejudice,
to the public interests. Your opinion is against the treaty, a treaty
concluded and formally ratified; and, to support that opinion, while yet
in the service of the government, you put a construction on its
provisions such as your own government does not put upon them, such as
you must be aware the enlightened public of Europe does not put upon
them, and such as England herself has not put upon them as yet, so far
as we know.
It may become necessary hereafter to publish your letter, in connection
with other correspondence of the mission; and although it is not to be
presumed that you looked to such publication, because such a presumption
would impute to you a claim to put forth your private opinions upon the
conduct of the President and Senate, in a transaction finished and
concluded, through the imposing form of a public despatch, yet, if
published, it cannot be foreseen how far England might hereafter rely
on your authority for a construction favorable to her own pretensions,
and inconsistent with the interest and honor of the United States. It is
certain that you would most sedulously desire to avoid any such
attitude. You would be slow to express opinions, in a solemn and
official form, favorable to another government, and on the authority of
which opinions that other government might hereafter found new claims or
set up new pretensions. It is for this reason, as well as others, that
the President feels so much regret at your desire of placing your
construction of the provisions of the treaty, and your objections to
those provisions, according to your construction, upon the records of
the government.
Before examining the several objections suggested by you, it may be
proper to take notice of what you say upon the course of the
negotiation. In regard to this, having observed that the national
dignity of the United States had not been compromised down to the time
of the President's message to the last session of Congress, you proceed
to say: "But England then urged the United States to enter into a
conventional arrangement, by which we might be pledged to concur with
her in measures for the suppression of the slave-trade. Till then we had
executed our own laws in our own way. But, yielding to this application,
and departing from our former principle of avoiding European
combinations upon subjects not American, we stipulated in a solemn
treaty, that we would carry into effect our own laws, and fixed the
minimum force we would employ for that purpose."
The President cannot conceive how you should have been led to adventure
upon such a statement as this. It is but a tissue of mistakes. England
did not urge the United States to enter into this conventional
arrangement. The United States yielded to no application from England.
The proposition for abolishing the slave-trade, as it stands in the
treaty, was an American proposition; it originated with the executive
government of the United States, which cheerfully assumes all its
responsibility. It stands upon it as its own mode of fulfilling its
duties, and accomplishing its objects. Nor have the United States
departed, in this treaty, in the slightest degree, from their former
principles of avoiding European combinations upon subjects not American,
because the abolition of the African slave-trade is an American subject
as emphatically as it is a European subject; and indeed more so,
inasmuch as the government of the United States took the first great
steps in declaring that trade unlawful, and in attempting its
extinction. The abolition of this traffic is an object of the highest
interest to the American people and the American government; and you
seem strangely to have overlooked altogether the important fact, that
nearly thirty years ago, by the treaty of Ghent, the United States bound
themselves by solemn compact with England, to continue "their efforts to
promote its entire abolition," both parties pledging themselves by that
treaty to use their best endeavors to accomplish so desirable an object.
Again, you speak of an important concession made to the renewed
application of England. But the treaty, let it be repeated, makes no
concession to England whatever. It complies with no demand, grants no
application, conforms to no request. All these statements, thus by you
made, and which are so exceedingly erroneous, seem calculated to hold up
the idea, that in this treaty your government has been acting a
subordinate, or even a complying part.
The President is not a little startled that you should make such totally
groundless assumptions of fact, and then leave a discreditable inference
to be drawn from them. He directs me not only to repel this inference as
it ought to be repelled, but also to bring to your serious consideration
and reflection the propriety of such an assumed narration of facts as
your despatch, in this respect, puts forth.
Having informed the department that a copy of the letter of the 24th of
August, addressed by me to you, had been delivered to M. Guizot, you
proceed to say: "In executing this duty, I felt too well what was due to
my government and country to intimate my regret to a foreign power that
some declaration had not preceded the treaty, or some stipulation
accompanied it, by which the extraordinary pretension of Great Britain
to search our ships at all times and in all places, first put forth to
the world by Lord Palmerston on the 27th of August, 1841, and on the
13th of October following again peremptorily claimed as a right by Lord
Aberdeen, would have been abrogated, as equally incompatible with the
laws of nations and with the independence of the United States. I
confined myself, therefore, to a simple communication of your letter."
It may be true that the British pretension leads necessarily to
consequences as broad and general as your statement. But it is no more
than fair to state that pretension in the words of the British
government itself, and then it becomes matter of consideration and
argument how broad and extensive it really is. The last statement of
this pretension, or claim, by the British government, is contained in
Lord Aberdeen's note to Mr. Stevenson of the 13th of October, 1841. It
is in these words:--
"The undersigned readily admits, that to visit and search American
vessels in time of peace, when that right of search is not granted
by treaty, would be an infraction of public law, and a violation of
national dignity and independence. But no such right is asserted.
We sincerely desire to respect the vessels of the United States,
but we may reasonably expect to know what it really is that we
respect. Doubtless the flag is _prima facie_ evidence of the
nationality of the vessel; and, if this evidence were in its nature
conclusive and irrefragable, it ought to preclude all further
inquiry. But it is sufficiently notorious that the flags of all
nations are liable to be assumed by those who have no right or
title to bear them. Mr. Stevenson himself fully admits the extent
to which the American flag has been employed for the purpose of
covering this infamous traffic. The undersigned joins with Mr.
Stevenson in deeply lamenting the evil; and he agrees with him in
thinking that the United States ought not to be considered
responsible for this abuse of their flag. But if all inquiry be
resisted, even when carried no further than to ascertain the
nationality of the vessel, and impunity be claimed for the most
lawless and desperate of mankind, in the commission of this fraud,
the undersigned greatly fears that it may be regarded as something
like an assumption of that responsibility which has been deprecated
by Mr. Stevenson....
"The undersigned renounces all pretension on the part of the
British government to visit and search American vessels in time of
peace. Nor is it as American that such vessels are ever visited;
but, it has been the invariable practice of the British navy, and,
as the undersigned believes, of all navies in the world, to
ascertain by visit the real nationality of merchant-vessels met
with on the high seas, if there be good reason to apprehend their
illegal character....
"The undersigned admits, that, if the British cruiser should
possess a knowledge of the American character of any vessel, his
visitation of such vessel would be entirely unjustifiable. He
further admits, that so much respect and honor are due to the
American flag, that no vessel bearing it ought to be visited by a
British cruiser, except under the most grave suspicions and
well-founded doubts of the genuineness of its character.
"The undersigned, although with pain, must add, that if such visit
should lead to the proof of the American origin of the vessel, and
that she was avowedly engaged in the slave-trade, exhibiting to
view the manacles, fetters, and other usual implements of torture,
or had even a number of these unfortunate beings on board, no
British officer could interfere further. He might give information
to the cruisers of the United States, but it could not be in his
own power to arrest or impede the prosecution of the voyage and the
success of the undertaking.
"It is obvious, therefore, that the utmost caution is necessary in
the exercise of this right claimed by Great Britain. While we have
recourse to the necessary, and, indeed, the only means for
detecting imposture, the practice will be carefully guarded and
limited to cases of strong suspicion. The undersigned begs to
assure Mr. Stevenson that the most precise and positive
instructions have been issued to her Majesty's officers on this
subject."
Such are the words of the British claim or pretension; and it stood in
this form at the delivery of the President's message to Congress in
December last; a message in which you are pleased to say that the
British pretension was promptly met and firmly resisted.
I may now proceed to a more particular examination of the objections
which you make to the treaty.
You observe that you think a just self-respect required of the
government of the United States to demand of Lord Ashburton a distinct
renunciation of the British claim to search our vessels previous to
entering into any negotiation. The government has thought otherwise; and
this appears to be your main objection to the treaty, if, indeed, it be
not the only one which is clearly and distinctly stated. The government
of the United States supposed that, in this respect, it stood in a
position in which it had no occasion to demand any thing, or ask for any
thing, of England. The British pretension, whatever it was, or however
extensive, was well known to the President at the date of his message to
Congress at the opening of the last session. And I must be allowed to
remind you how the President treated this subject in that communication.
"However desirous the United States may be," said he, "for the
suppression of the slave-trade, they cannot consent to
interpolations into the maritime code at the mere will and pleasure
of other governments. We deny the right of any such interpolation
to any one, or all the nations of the earth, without our consent.
We claim to have a voice in all amendments or alterations of that
code; and when we are given to understand, as in this instance, by
a foreign government, that its treaties with other nations cannot
be executed without the establishment and enforcement of new
principles of maritime police, to be applied without our consent,
we must employ a language neither of equivocal import nor
susceptible of misconstruction. American citizens prosecuting a
lawful commerce in the African seas, under the flag of their
country, are not responsible for the abuse or unlawful use of that
flag by others; nor can they rightfully, on account of any such
alleged abuses, be interrupted, molested, or detained while on the
ocean; and if thus molested and detained while pursuing honest
voyages in the usual way, and violating no law themselves, they are
unquestionably entitled to indemnity."
This declaration of the President stands: not a syllable of it has been,
or will be, retracted. The principles which it announces rest on their
inherent justice and propriety, on their conformity to public law, and,
so far as we are concerned, on the determination and ability of the
country to maintain them. To these principles the government is pledged,
and that pledge it will be at all times ready to redeem.
But what is your own language on this point? You say, "This claim (the
British claim), thus asserted and supported, was promptly met and firmly
repelled by the President in his message at the commencement of the last
session of Congress; and in your letter to me approving the course I had
adopted in relation to the question of the ratification by France of the
quintuple treaty, you consider the principles of that message as the
established policy of the government." And you add, "So far, our
national dignity was uncompromitted." If this be so, what is there which
has since occurred to compromit this dignity? You shall yourself be
judge of this; because you say, in a subsequent part of your letter,
that "the mutual rights of the parties are in this respect wholly
untouched." If, then, the British pretension had been promptly met and
firmly repelled by the President's message; if, so far, our national
dignity had not been compromitted; and if, as you further say, our
rights remain wholly untouched by any subsequent act or proceeding, what
ground is there on which to found complaint against the treaty?
But your sentiments on this point do not concur with the opinions of
your government. That government is of opinion that the sentiments of
the message, which you so highly approve, are reaffirmed and
corroborated by the treaty, and the correspondence accompanying it. The
very object sought to be obtained, in proposing the mode adopted for
abolishing the slave-trade, was to take away all pretence whatever for
interrupting lawful commerce by the visitation of American vessels.
Allow me to refer you, on this point, to the following passage in the
message of the President to the Senate, accompanying the treaty:--
"In my message at the commencement of the present session of
Congress, I endeavored to state the principles which this
government supports respecting the right of search and the immunity
of flags. Desirous of maintaining those principles fully, at the
same time that existing obligations should be fulfilled, I have
thought it most consistent with the dignity and honor of the
country that it should execute its own laws and perform its own
obligations by its own means and its own power. The examination or
visitation of the merchant-vessels of one nation by the cruisers of
another, for any purposes except those known and acknowledged by
the law of nations, under whatever restraints or regulations it may
take place, may lead to dangerous results. It is far better by
other means to supersede any supposed necessity, or any motive, for
such examination or visit. Interference with a merchant-vessel by
an armed cruiser is always a delicate proceeding, apt to touch the
point of national honor, as well as to affect the interests of
individuals. It has been thought, therefore, expedient, not only in
accordance with the stipulations of the treaty of Ghent, but at the
same time as removing all pretext on the part of others for
violating the immunities of the American flag upon the seas, as
they exist and are defined by the law of nations, to enter into the
articles now submitted to the Senate.
"The treaty which I now submit to you proposes no alteration,
mitigation, or modification of the rules of the law of nations. It
provides simply, that each of the two governments shall maintain on
the coast of Africa a sufficient squadron to enforce, separately
and respectively, the laws, rights, and obligations of the two
countries for the suppression of the slave-trade."
In the actual posture of things, the President thought that the
government of the United States, standing on its own rights and its own
solemn declarations, would only weaken its position by making such a
demand as appears to you to have been expedient. We maintain the public
law of the world as we receive it and understand it to be established.
We defend our own rights and our own honor, meeting all aggression at
the boundary. Here we may well stop.
You are pleased to observe, that "under the circumstances of the
assertion of the British claim, in the correspondence of the British
secretaries, and of its denial by the President of the United States,
the eyes of Europe were upon these two great naval powers; one of which
had advanced a pretension, and avowed her determination to enforce it,
which might at any moment bring them into collision."
It is certainly true that the attention of Europe has been very much
awakened, of late years, to the general subject, and quite alive, also,
to whatever might take place in regard to it between the United States
and Great Britain. And it is highly satisfactory to find, that, so far
as we can learn, the opinion is universal that the government of the
United States has fully sustained its rights and its dignity by the
treaty which has been concluded. Europe, we believe, is happy to see
that a collision, which might have disturbed the peace of the whole
civilized world, has been avoided in a manner which reconciles the
performance of a high national duty, and the fulfilment of positive
stipulations, with the perfect immunity of flags and the equality of
nations upon the ocean. I must be permitted to add, that, from every
agent of the government abroad who has been heard from on the subject,
with the single exception of your own letter, (an exception most deeply
regretted,) as well as from every part of Europe where maritime rights
have advocates and defenders, we have received nothing but
congratulation. And at this moment, if the general sources of
information may be trusted, our example has recommended itself already
to the regard of states the most jealous of British ascendency at sea;
and the treaty against which you remonstrate may soon come to be
esteemed by them as a fit model for imitation.
Toward the close of your despatch, you are pleased to say: "By the
recent treaty we are to keep a squadron upon the coast of Africa. We
have kept one there for years; during the whole term, indeed, of these
efforts to put a stop to this most iniquitous commerce. The effect of
the treaty is, therefore, to render it obligatory upon us by a
convention, to do what we have long done voluntarily; to place our
municipal laws, in some measure, beyond the reach of Congress." Should
the effect of the treaty be to place our municipal laws, in some
measure, beyond the reach of Congress, it is sufficient to say that all
treaties containing obligations necessarily do this. All treaties of
commerce do it; and, indeed, there is hardly a treaty existing, to which
the United States are party, which does not, to some extent, or in some
way, restrain the legislative power. Treaties could not be made without
producing this effect.
But your remark would seem to imply that, in your judgment, there is
something derogatory to the character and dignity of the country in thus
stipulating with a foreign power for a concurrent effort to execute the
laws of each. It would be a sufficient refutation of this objection to
say, that, if in this arrangement there be any thing derogatory to the
character and dignity of one party, it must be equally derogatory, since
the stipulation is perfectly mutual, to the character and dignity of
both. But it is derogatory to the character and dignity of neither. The
objection seems to proceed still upon the implied ground that the
abolition of the slave-trade is more a duty of Great Britain, or a more
leading object with her, than it is or should be with us; as if, in this
great effort of civilized nations to do away the most cruel traffic that
ever scourged or disgraced the world, we had not as high and honorable,
as just and merciful, a part to act, as any other nation upon the face
of the earth. Let it be for ever remembered, that in this great work of
humanity and justice the United States took the lead themselves. This
government declared the slave-trade unlawful; and in this declaration it
has been followed by the great powers of Europe. This government
declared the slave-trade to be piracy; and in this, too, its example has
been followed by other states. This government, this young government,
springing up in this new world within half a century, founded on the
broadest principles of civil liberty, and sustained by the moral sense
and intelligence of the people, has gone in advance of all other nations
in summoning the civilized world to a common effort to put down and
destroy a nefarious traffic reproachful to human nature. It has not
deemed, and it does not deem, that it suffers any derogation from its
character or its dignity, if, in seeking to fulfil this sacred duty, it
act, as far as necessary, on fair and equal terms of concert with other
powers having in view the same praiseworthy object. Such were its
sentiments when it entered into the solemn stipulations of the treaty of
Ghent; such were its sentiments when it requested England to concur with
us in declaring the slave-trade to be piracy; and such are the
sentiments which it has manifested on all other proper occasions.
In conclusion, I have to repeat the expression of the President's deep
regret at the general tone and character of your letter, and to assure
you of the great happiness it would have afforded him if, concurring
with the judgment of the President and Senate, concurring with what
appears to be the general sense of the country, concurring in all the
manifestations of enlightened public opinion in Europe, you had seen
nothing in the treaty of the 9th of August to which you could not give
your cordial approbation.