[Translation.]
Memorandum.
The consul of France at New Orleans, acting in conformity with the French ordinances on the subject, has received, at recent times, a certain number of deposits of specie made with him by French subjects. He could not fail, in conformity always with such ordinances, to exhaust, before receiving said deposits, all possible means of information for attaining the fullest and most circumstantial knowledge about the character and origin of these deposits. Those means being exhausted, he would be exposed to severe rebuke from his government by declining to receive those deposits in his chancery, which would have been equivalent to refusal of protection to them, and, in effect, the exceptional circumstances in which New Orleans is at present temporarily placed sufficiently explain why some Frenchmen ought to wish to place their valuables in a sure deposit, and under the protection of the flag of their country.
Mr. Mejan has been called before General Butler, who has interrogated him on the subject of these deposits. Without denying their existence, he has refused to give any details in respect of them, because he did not recognize what right General Butler could have to interrogate him, and because, in complying with his request, he would have been faithless to the trust which his countrymen had placed in him, and would place himself in contravention of the precise terms of the consular convention of 1853; those especially of article 3, according to which the papers in the consular chanceries cannot in any case be searched. General Butler then told him that, if he would not give his word of honor not to allow any deposit of any importance to be taken away, he would send a guard to watch the consulate.
In this dilemma Mr. Mejan, desiring to continue to act in the most conciliatory spirit, but forgetting that he was subscribing to an obligation which he had no right to assume, and thereby placing himself in a most delicate position towards his countrymen, whose funds he had no power to detain when they should come to demand them again, gave this word of honor.
Mr. Mejan has, in a later communication, expressed to General Butler his regret at having pledged his word. It is of consequence that he should be promptly relieved, and Mr. Reverdy Johnson could receive, in this particular, instructions from the government of the United States, and end in a spirit of conciliation an incidental matter from which very serious difficulties might result to the consul of France in relations with his countrymen, and entanglements to be regretted with the authorities at New Orleans.