Part 123

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.

I have, &c.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

LEWIS CASS, ESQ., &c., &c., &c.

* * * * *

_Mr. Webster to General Cass._

Department of State, Washington, December 20, 1842.

Sir,--Your letter of the 11th instant has been submitted to the President. He directs me to say, in reply, that he continues to regard your correspondence, of which this letter is part, as being quite irregular from the beginning. You had asked leave to retire from your mission; the leave was granted by the President, with kind and friendly remarks upon the manner in which you had discharged its duties. Having asked for this honorable recall, which was promptly given, you afterward addressed to this department your letter of the 3d of October, which, however it may appear to you, the President cannot but consider as a remonstrance, a protest, against the treaty of the 9th of August; in other words, an attack upon his administration for the negotiation and conclusion of that treaty. He certainly was not prepared for this. It came upon him with no small surprise, and he still feels that you must have been, at the moment, under the influence of temporary impressions, which he cannot but hope have ere now worn away.

A few remarks upon some of the points of your last letter must now close the correspondence.

In the first place, you object to my having called your letter of October 3d a "protest or remonstrance" against a transaction of the government, and observe that you must have been unhappy in the mode of expressing yourself, if you were liable to this charge.

What other construction your letter will bear, I cannot perceive. The transaction was _finished_. No letter or remarks of yourself, or any one else, could undo it, if desirable. Your opinions were unsolicited. If given as a citizen, then it was altogether unusual to address them to this department in an official despatch; if as a public functionary, the whole subject-matter was quite aside from the duties of your particular station. In your letter you did not propose any thing _to be done_, but objected to what had been done. You did not suggest any method of remedying what you were pleased to consider a defect, but stated what you thought to be reasons for fearing its consequences. You declared that there had been, in your opinion, an omission to assert American rights; to which omission you gave the department to understand that you would never have consented.

In all this there is nothing but protest and remonstrance; and, though your letter be not formally entitled such, I cannot see that it can be construed, in effect, as any thing else; and I must continue to think, therefore, that the terms used are entirely applicable and proper.

In the next place, you say: "You give me to understand that the communications which have passed between us on this subject are to be published, and submitted to the great tribunal of public opinion."

It would have been better if you had quoted my remark with entire correctness. What I said was, not that the communications which have passed between us _are to be_ published, or _must_ be published, but that "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."

In another part of your letter you observe: "The publication of my letter, which is to produce this result, is to be the act of the government, and not my act. But if the President should think that the slightest injury to the public interest would ensue from the disclosure of my views, the letter may be buried in the archives of the department, and thus forgotten and rendered harmless."

To this I have to remark, in the first place, that instances have occurred in other times, not unknown to you, in which highly important letters from ministers of the United States, in Europe, to their own government, have found their way into the newspapers of Europe, when that government itself held it to be inconsistent with the interest of the United States to make such letters public.

But it is hardly worth while to pursue a topic like this.

You are pleased to ask: "Is it the duty of a diplomatic agent to receive all the communications of his government, and to carry into effect their instructions _sub silentio_, whatever may be his own sentiments in relation to them; or is he not bound, as a faithful representative, to communicate freely, but respectfully, his own views, that these may be considered, and receive their due weight, in that particular case, or in other circumstances involving similar considerations? It seems to me that the bare enunciation of the principle is all that is necessary for my justification. I am speaking now of the propriety of my action, not of the manner in which it was performed. I may have executed the task well or ill. I may have introduced topics unadvisedly, and urged them indiscreetly. All this I leave without remark. I am only endeavoring here to free myself from the serious charge which you bring against me. If I have misapprehended the duties of an American diplomatic agent upon this subject, I am well satisfied to have withdrawn, by a timely resignation, from a position in which my own self-respect would not permit me to remain. And I may express the conviction, that there is no government, certainly none this side of Constantinople, which would not encourage rather than rebuke the free expression of the views of their representatives in foreign countries."

I answer, certainly not. In the letter to which you were replying it was fully stated, that, "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."

You have not been requested to bestow your approbation upon the treaty, however gratifying it would have been to the President to see that, in that respect, you united with other distinguished public agents abroad. Like all citizens of the republic, you are quite at liberty to exercise your own judgment upon that as upon other transactions. But neither your observations nor this concession cover the case. They do not show, that, as a public minister abroad, it is a part of your official functions, in a public despatch, to remonstrate against the conduct of the government at home in relation to a transaction in which you bore no part, and for which you were in no way answerable. The President and Senate must be permitted to judge for themselves in a matter solely within their control. Nor do I know that, in complaining of your protest against their proceedings in a case of this kind, any thing has been done to warrant, on your part, an invidious and unjust reference to Constantinople. If you could show, by the general practice of diplomatic functionaries in the civilized part of the world, and more especially, if you could show by any precedent drawn from the conduct of the many distinguished men who have represented the government of the United States abroad, that your letter of the 3d of October was, in its general object, tone, and character, within the usual limits of diplomatic correspondence, you may be quite assured that the President would not have recourse to the code of Turkey in order to find precedents the other way.

You complain that, in the letter from this department of the 14th of November, a statement contained in yours of the 3d of October is called a tissue of mistakes, and you attempt to show the impropriety of this appellation. Let the point be distinctly stated, and what you say in reply be then considered.

In your letter of October 3d you remark, that "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. Until 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 letter of this department of the 14th of November, having quoted this passage, proceeds to observe, that "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 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 step 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."

Now, in answer to this, you observe in your last letter: "That the particular mode in which the governments should act in concert, as finally arranged in the treaty, was suggested by yourself, I never doubted. And if this is the construction I am to give to your denial of my correctness, there is no difficulty upon the subject. The question between us is untouched. All I said was, that England continued to prosecute the matter; that she presented it for negotiation, and that we thereupon consented to its introduction. And if Lord Ashburton did not come out with instructions from his government to endeavor to effect some arrangement upon this subject, the world has strangely misunderstood one of the great objects of his mission, and I have misunderstood that paragraph in your first note, where you say that Lord Ashburton comes with full powers to negotiate and settle all matters in discussion between England and the United States. But the very fact of his coming here, and of his acceding to any stipulations respecting the slave-trade, is conclusive proof that his government were desirous to obtain the co-operation of the United States. I had supposed that our government would scarcely take the initiative in this matter, and urge it upon that of Great Britain, either in Washington or in London. If it did so, I can only express my regret, and confess that I have been led inadvertently into an error."

It would appear from all this, that that which, in your first letter, appeared as a direct statement of facts, of which you would naturally be presumed to have had knowledge, sinks at last into inferences and conjectures. But, in attempting to escape from some of the mistakes of this tissue, you have fallen into others. "All I said was," you observe, "that England continued to prosecute the matter; that she presented it for negotiation, and that we thereupon consented to its introduction." Now the English minister no more presented this subject for negotiation than the government of the United States presented it. Nor can it be said that the United States consented to its introduction in any other sense than it may be said that the British minister consented to it. Will you be good enough to review the series of your own assertions on this subject, and see whether they can possibly be regarded merely as a statement of your own inferences? Your only authentic fact is a general one, that the British minister came clothed with full power to negotiate and settle all matters in discussion. This, you say, is conclusive proof that his government was desirous to obtain the co-operation of the United States respecting the slave-trade; and then you infer that England continued to prosecute this matter, and presented it for negotiation, and that the United States consented to its introduction; and give to this inference the shape of a direct statement of a fact.

You might have made the same remarks, and with the same propriety, in relation to the subject of the "Creole," that of impressment, the extradition of fugitive criminals, or any thing else embraced in the treaty or in the correspondence, and then have converted these inferences of your own into so many facts. And it is upon conjectures like these, it is upon such inferences of your own, that you make the direct and formal statement in your letter of the 3d of October, that "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. Until 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 was well warranted, therefore, in requesting your serious reconsideration and review of that statement.

Suppose your letter to go before the public unanswered and uncontradicted; suppose it to mingle itself with the general political history of the country, as an official letter among the archives of the Department of State, would not the general mass of readers understand you as reciting facts, rather than as drawing your own conclusions? as stating history, rather than as presenting an argument? It is of an incorrect narrative that the President complains. It is that, in your hotel at Paris, you should undertake to write a history of a very delicate part of a negotiation carried on at Washington, with which you had nothing to do, and of the history of which you had no authentic information; and which history, as you narrate it, reflects not a little on the independence, wisdom, and public spirit of the administration.

As of the history of this part of the negotiation you were not well informed, the President cannot but think it would have been more just in you to have refrained from any attempt to give an account of it.

You observe, further: "I never mentioned in my despatch to you, nor in any manner whatever, that our government had conceded to that of England the right to search our ships. That idea, however, pervades your letter, and is very apparent in that part of it which brings to my observation the possible effect of my views upon the English government. But in this you do me, though I am sure unintentionally, great injustice. I repeatedly state that the recent treaty leaves the rights of the parties as it found them. My difficulty is not that we have made a positive concession, but that we have acted unadvisedly in not making the abandonment of this pretension a previous condition to any conventional arrangement upon the general subject."

On this part of your letter I must be allowed to make two remarks.

The first is, inasmuch as the treaty gives no color or pretext whatever to any right of searching our ships, a declaration against such a right would have been no more suitable to this treaty than a declaration against the right of sacking our towns in time of peace, or any other outrage.

The rights of merchant-vessels of the United States on the high seas, as understood by this government, have been clearly and fully asserted. As asserted, they will be maintained; nor would a declaration such as you propose have increased either its resolution or its ability in this respect. The government of the United States relies on its own power, and on the effective support of the people, to assert successfully all the rights of all its citizens, on the sea as well as on the land; and it asks respect for these rights not as a boon or favor from any nation. The President's message, most certainly, is a clear declaration of what the country understands to be its rights, and his determination to maintain them; not a mere promise to negotiate for these rights, or to endeavor to bring other powers into an acknowledgment of them, either express or implied. Whereas, if I understand the meaning of this part of your letter, you would have advised that something should have been offered to England which she might have regarded as a benefit, but coupled with such a declaration or condition as that, if she received the boon, it would have been a recognition by her of a claim which we make as matter of right. The President's view of the proper duty of the government has certainly been quite different. Being convinced that the doctrine asserted by this government is the true doctrine of the law of nations, and feeling the competency of the government to uphold and enforce it for itself, he has not sought, but, on the contrary, has sedulously avoided, to change this ground, and to place the just rights of the country upon the assent, express or implied, of any power whatever.