Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/63

Rh treaty, while the United States were to make certain reductions in the duties on French wines. Congress promptly passed a law accordingly. The treaty was ratified on February 2, 1832: the first French payment was therefore due on February 2, 1833. A draft was drawn upon the French government, and presented to the French Minister of Finance at Paris. But payment was refused on the ground that the French Chambers had made no appropriation for that purpose. There was at the time no American Minister at Paris. Edward Livingston, whom we have met as Secretary of State, vacating that office for McLane, was sent, with strong instructions, to fill that position. King Louis Philippe promised to do his best with the Chambers, but the appropriation failed again. The French king is said then to have confidentially intimated to Livingston that an earnest passage in the President's next message might serve to induce the French Chambers to give attention to the subject. Livingston reported something like this to his government. For earnest passages Jackson was the man. He put a paragraph into his annual message of December, 1834, in which, after recapitulating the whole story, he bluntly recommended that “a law be passed authorizing reprisals upon French property, in case provision shall not be made for the payment of the debt at the approaching session of the French Chambers.”

That was undoubtedly more earnestness than King Louis Philippe had meant to suggest. What