Consular institutions being entirely new with us, Congress think it wise
to make their first convention probationary, and not perpetual. They
propose, therefore, a clause for limiting its duration to a certain term
of years. If after the experience of a few years, it should be found to
answer the purposes intended by it, both parties will have sufficient
inducements to renew it, either in its present form, or with such
alterations and amendments, as time, experience, and other circumstances
may indicate.
The convention, as expressed in the French language, will fully answer
our purposes in France, because it will there be understood. But it will
not equally answer the purposes of France in America, because it will
not there be understood. In very few of the courts, wherein it may be
presented, will there be found a single judge or advocate, capable of
translating it at all, much less of giving to all its terms, legal
and technical, their exact equivalent in the laws and language of
that country. Should any translation which Congress would undertake to
publish, for the use of our courts, be conceived on any occasion not to
render fully the idea of the French original, it might be imputed as an
indirect attempt to abridge or extend the terms of a contract, at the
will of one party only.
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