Tell M. de Moustier that our government is astonished and distressed at the announcement now made for the first time,— that the promised withdrawal of a detachment of French troops from Mexico, which ought to have taken place in November, has been put off by the emperor. The embarrassment resulting from this is considerably increased by the circumstance that this resolution was adopted by the emperor without having conferred with the United States about it, or even advising them on the point. Our government has in no way sent reinforcements to the Mexicans, as the emperor seems to presume; and it knew nothing at all about his counter-order to Marshal Bazaine of which the emperor speaks.
We consult the official communications only, when we want to know the aims and resolutions of France, just as we communicate our own intentions and resolutions in this way when France is in question. I am not in a position to say, and, for the present it would be unnecessary to enter on the question, whether the President would have been able or not to acquiesce in the delay intended by the emperor, supposing that he had been consulted at a fitting time, and that this proposition had been based as now on purely military considerations, and that it had been characterised by ordinary manifestations of deference to the interests and feelings of the United States.
But the decision arrived at by the emperor of modifying the present arrangement without any previous understanding with the United States, and of leaving, for the present, the whole of the French army in Mexico, instead of withdrawing a detachment in November as promised, appears at the present time to be in every respect to be regretted.
We cannot give our adhesion to it, firstly, because the time—'next spring'—which is fixed for the complete evacuation, is indefinite and vague; secondly, because there is nothing that authorises us to state to congress and the American people that we have even now any better guarantee for the recall of the entire expeditionary force in spring than we had before for the recall of a portion of it in November; thirdly, reckoning completely on the (at least) literal execution of the emperor's agreement, and therefore foreseeing the evacuation of the French troops, we have adopted measures for co-operating with the republican government of Mexico in the pacification