Mr. Motley knew well what was the logical order in an official execution, and saw fit to let the government work its will upon him as its servant.  In November he was recalled.

The recall of a minister under such circumstances is an unusual if not an unprecedented occurrence.  The government which appoints a citizen to represent the country at a foreign court assumes a very serious obligation to him.  The next administration may turn him out and nothing will be thought of it.  He may be obliged to ask for his passports and leave all at once if war is threatened between his own country and that which he represents.  He may, of course, be recalled for gross misconduct.  But his dismissal is very serious matter to him personally, and not to be thought of on the ground of passion or caprice.  Marriage is a simple business, but divorce is a very different thing.  The world wants to know the reason of it; the law demands its justification.  It was a great blow to Mr. Motley, a cause of indignation to those who were interested in him, a surprise and a mystery to the world in general.

When he, his friends, and the public, all startled by this unexpected treatment, looked to find an explanation of it, one was found which seemed to many quite sufficient.  Mr. Sumner had been prominent among those who had favored his appointment.  A very serious breach had taken place between the President and Mr. Sumner on the important San Domingo question.  It was a quarrel, in short, neither more nor less, at least so far as the President was concerned.  The proposed San Domingo treaty had just been rejected by the Senate, on the thirtieth day of June, and immediately thereupon,—­the very next day,—­the letter requesting Mr. Motley’s resignation was issued by the executive.  This fact was interpreted as implying something more than a mere coincidence.  It was thought that Sumner’s friend, who had been supported by him as a candidate for high office, who shared many of his political ideas and feelings, who was his intimate associate, his fellow-townsman, his companion in scholarship and cultivation, his sympathetic co-laborer in many ways, had been accounted and dealt with as the ally of an enemy, and that the shaft which struck to the heart of the sensitive envoy had glanced from the ‘aes triplex’ of the obdurate Senator.

Mr. Motley wrote a letter to the Secretary of State immediately after his recall, in which he reviewed his relations with the government from the time of his taking office, and showed that no sufficient reason could be assigned for the treatment to which he had been subjected.  He referred finally to the public rumor which assigned the President’s hostility to his friend Sumner, growing out of the San Domingo treaty question, as the cause of his own removal, and to the coincidence between the dates of the rejection of the treaty and his dismissal, with an evident belief that these two occurrences were connected by something more than accident.