C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874.

‘ [573] could not have been expected in the States, it is difficult to connect the resolution to supersede the late American Minister with the change at our Foreign Office.’ The difficulty of The Times is increased by the earlier incident with regard to myself.

Not content with making the removal depend upon the death of Lord Clarendon when it was heralded abroad, not only before the death of this minister had occurred, but while it was yet unforeseen, the document seeks to antedate the defeat of the Santo Domingo treaty, so as to interpose ‘weeks and months’ between the latter event and the removal. The language is explicit. ‘The treaty,’ says the document, ‘was admitted to be practically dead, and was only wanting the formal action of the Senate for weeks and months before the decease of the illustrious statesman of Great Britain.’ Weeks and months. And yet during the last month, when the treaty ‘was admitted to be practically dead,’ the Secretary who signed the document passed three hours at my house, pleading with me to withdraw my opposition, and finally wound up by the tender to me of the English mission, with no other apparent object than simply to get me out of the way.

Then again we have the positive allegation that the President embraced an opportunity ‘to prevent any further misapprehension of his views through Mr. Motley by taking from him the right to discuss further the Alabama claims,’ whereas the Secretary, in a letter to me at Boston, dated at Washington, Oct. 9th, 1869, informs me that the discussion of the question was withdrawn from London, ‘because [the italics are the Secretary's] we think that when renewed it can be carried on here, with a better prospect of settlement, than where the late attempt at a convention which resulted so disastrously and was conducted so strangely was had;’ and what the Secretary thus wrote he repeated in conversation when we met, carefully making the transfer to Washington depend upon our advantage here, from the presence of the Senate—thus showing that the pretext put forth to wound Mr. Motley was an afterthought.

Still further, the document signed by the Secretary alleges, by way of excuse for removing Mr. Motley, ‘the important public consideration of having a representative in sympathy with the President's views,’ whereas, when the Secretary tendered the mission to me, no allusion was made to ‘sympathy with the President's views,’ while Mr. Motley, it appears, was charged with agreeing too much with me—all of which