The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster Part 78

_Mr. Webster to General Ca.s.s._

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 a.s.sert 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 ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sage, 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 a.s.sumes 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 a.s.sertions 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.serted. As a.s.serted, 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 a.s.sert 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 a.s.serted 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 a.s.sent, express or implied, of any power whatever.

The government thought no skilfully extorted promises necessary in any such cases. It asks no such pledges of any nation. If its character for ability and readiness to protect and defend its own rights and dignity is not sufficient to preserve them from violation, no interpolation of promise to respect them, ingeniously woven into treaties, would be likely to afford such protection. And as our rights and liberties depend for existence upon our power to maintain them, general and vague protests are not likely to be more effectual than the Chinese method of defending their towns, by painting grotesque and hideous figures on the walls to fright away a.s.sailing foes.

My other remark on this portion of your letter is this:--

Suppose a declaration to the effect that this treaty should not be considered as sacrificing any American rights had been appended, and the treaty, thus fortified, had been sent to Great Britain, as you propose; and suppose that that government, with equal ingenuity, had appended an equivalent written declaration that it should not be considered as sacrificing any British right, how much more defined would have been the rights of either party, or how much clearer the meaning and interpretation of the treaty, by these reservations on both sides? Or, in other words, what is the value of a protest on one side, balanced by an exactly equivalent protest on the other?

No nation is presumed to sacrifice its rights, or give up what justly belongs to it, unless it expressly stipulates that, for some good reason or adequate consideration, it does make such relinquishment; and an unnecessary a.s.severation that it does not intend to sacrifice just rights would seem only calculated to invite aggression. Such proclamations would seem better devised for concealing weakness and apprehension, than for manifesting conscious strength and self-reliance, or for inspiring respect in others.

Toward the end of your letter you are pleased to observe: "The rejection of a treaty, duly negotiated, is a serious question, to be avoided whenever it can be without too great a sacrifice. Though the national faith is not actually committed, still it is more or less engaged. And there were peculiar circ.u.mstances, growing out of long-standing difficulties, which rendered an amicable arrangement of the various matters in dispute with England a subject of great national interest.

But the negotiation of a treaty is a far different subject. Topics are omitted or introduced at the discretion of the negotiators, and they are responsible, to use the language of an eminent and able Senator, for 'what it contains and what it omits.' This treaty, in my opinion, omits a most important and necessary stipulation; and therefore, as it seems to me, its negotiation, in this particular, was unfortunate for the country."

The President directs me to say, in reply to this, that in the treaty of Washington no topics were omitted, and no topics introduced, at the mere discretion of the negotiator; that the negotiation proceeded from step to step, and from day to day, under his own immediate supervision and direction; that he himself takes the responsibility for what the treaty contains and what it omits, and cheerfully leaves the merits of the whole to the judgment of the country.

I now conclude this letter, and close this correspondence, by repeating once more the expression of the President's regret that you should have commenced it by your letter of the 3d of October.

It is painful to him to have with you any cause of difference. He has a just appreciation of your character and your public services at home and abroad. He cannot but persuade himself that you must be aware yourself, by this time, that your letter of October was written under erroneous impressions, and that there is no foundation for the opinions respecting the treaty which it expresses; and that it would have been far better on all accounts if no such letter had been written.

I have, &c.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

LEWIS Ca.s.s, ESQ., _Late Minister of the United States at Paris_.

THE HuLSEMANN LETTER.

[As the authorship of this remarkable paper has sometimes been imputed to another person, it may be proper to give the facts respecting its preparation, although they involve nothing more important than a question of literary interest.

Mr. Webster, as has been stated, arrived at Marshfield on the 9th of October, 1850, where he remained for the s.p.a.ce of two weeks. He brought with him the papers relating to this controversy with Austria. Before he left Washington, he gave to Mr. Hunter, a gentleman then and still filling an important post in the Department of State, verbal instructions concerning some of the points which would require to be touched in an answer to Mr. Hulsemann's letter of September 30th, and requested Mr. Hunter to prepare a draft of such an answer. This was done, and Mr. Hunter's draft of an answer was forwarded to Mr. Webster at Marshfield. On the 20th of October, 1850, Mr. Webster, being far from well, addressed a note to Mr. Everett,[1] requesting him also to prepare a draft of a reply to Mr. Hulsemann, at the same time sending to Mr.

Everett a copy of Mr. Hulsemann's letter and of President Taylor's message to the Senate relating to Mr. Mann's mission to Hungary.[2] On the 21st Mr. Webster went to his farm in Franklin, New Hampshire, where he remained until the 4th of November. While there he received from Mr.

Everett a draft of an answer to Mr. Hulsemann, which was written by Mr.