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

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As nothing like this State paper can be shown in the history of our Government, so also nothing like it can be shown in the history of other governments. Not an instance can be named in any country where a personage in corresponding official position has done such a thing. The American Secretary is alone, not only in his own country, but in all countries; ‘none but himself can be his parallel.’ Seneca, in the Hercules Furens, has pictured him:

Quaeris Alcidae parem?
     Nemo est nisi ipse.

He is originator and first inventor, with all prerogatives and responsibilities thereto belonging.

I have mentioned only one sally in this painful document; but the whole, besides its prevailing offensiveness, shows inconsistency with actual facts of my own knowledge, which is in entire harmony with the recklessness toward me, and attests the same spirit throughout. Thus we have the positive allegation that the death of Lord Clarendon, June 27, 1870, ‘determined the time for inviting Mr. Motley to make place for a successor,’ when, in point of fact, some time before his lordship's illness, even the Secretary had invited me to go to London as Mr. Motley's successor—thus showing that the explanation of Lord Clarendon's death was an after-thought when it became important to divert attention from the obvious dependence of the removal upon the defeat of the Santo Domingo treaty.

A kindred inconsistency arrested the attention of The London Times in its article of January 24, 1871, on the document signed by the Secretary. Here, according to this journal, the document supplied the means of correction, since it set forth that on the 25th June, two days before Lord Clarendon's death, Mr. Motley's coming removal was announced in a London journal. After stating the alleged dependence of the removal upon the death of Lord Clarendon, the journal, holding the scales, remarks, ‘And yet there is at least one circumstance appearing, strange to say, in Mr. Fish's own dispatch, which is not quite consistent with the explanation he sets up of Mr. Motley's recall.’ Then, after quoting from the document, and mentioning that its own correspondent at Philadelphia did, on the 25th June, ‘send us a message that Mr. Motley was about to be withdrawn,’ the journal mildly concludes that ‘as this was two days before Lord Clarendon's death, which was unforeseen here, and ’