Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch of January 21, which is accompanied by a copy of the note you addressed to Earl Russell on the 19th of that month in execution of the instructions conveyed in my despatch to you of the 20th of December last, No. 789.
[Page 132]Your proceedings thus reported to this department are fully approved.
With reference to the Canadian reciprocity question, you are authorized to say that nothing could be more foreign from the purpose or the desire of the President than to hold up the difficulties which are arising in regard to that question with any view of mere demonstration. Discontent with the operation of that treaty, the argument of the need to economize revenue, the soreness produced by the co-operation of British subjects in the British islands, and more especially of British subjects in the provinces adjacent to the United States in the slave insurrection, have had the effect to bring on legislative agitation of the question which the President would willingly have averted until a later and more convenient season. Every day opposition to the treaty seems to be gaining strength. I have been less free and full in my explanations to you on this subject than I have in my communications with Lord Lyons, for the reason that his presence here would enable him to weigh such representations as I have found it necessary to make with more candor than I could expect for them at London. I think his lordship will have prepared the way for your representations on the subject to Earl Russell. It is not, however, my purpose to control your action upon the subject, or to limit you in the exercise of your discretion as to the time and manner in which they shall be made.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., London.