By adverting to the signatures appended to the original draft of the convention as transmitted from the Department of State to General Thompson it will be seen that the convention as concluded was substantially approved by the representatives of a large majority in value of the parties immediately interested.

A copy of the instructions from the Department of State to the minister of the United States at Mexico relative to the convention and of the dispatches of that minister to the Department is also communicated.

To the House of Representatives: I communicate to the House of Representatives a report from the Secretary of State, which, with the documents* accompanying it, furnishes the information requested by their resolution of the 18th instant.

I transmit to the Senate, for its consideration with a view to ratification, a convention further to provide for the payment of awards in favor of claimants under the convention between the United States and the Mexican Republic of the 11th of April, 1839, signed in the City of Mexico on the 30th day of last month.

We chose to make a practical settlement of the question.

Those engaged in it were as little liable to inquiry or interruption as any others.

It is left to Congress to consider, under these circumstances, whether, although in strictness salvage may have been lawfully due, it might not yet be wise to make provision to refund it, as a proof of the entire good faith of the Government and of its disposition to fulfill all its treaty stipulations to their full extent under a fair and liberal construction.

The principles laid down in Lord Aberdeen's dispatches and the assurances of indemnity therein held out, although the utmost reliance was placed on the good faith of the British Government, were not regarded by the Executive as a sufficient security against the abuses which Lord Aberdeen admitted might arise in even the most cautious and moderate exercise of their new maritime police.

I may safely affirm that it never occurred to this Government that any new maritime right accrued to it from the position it had thus assumed in regard to the slave trade.

This correspondence will show the general grounds on which the Spanish minister expresses dissatisfaction with the decision of the Supreme Court in that case and the answers which have been made to his complaints by the Department of State.

I can not forego the expression of my regret at the apparent purport of a part of Lord Aberdeen's dispatch to Mr. Fox.