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.
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