“That he had in his mind at that interview something else than his letter of instructions from this department would appear to be evident, when he says that ’he called his lordship’s attention to your [my] very judicious suggestion that the throwing of dice for umpire might bring about opposite decisions.’  The instructions which Mr. Motley received from me contained no suggestion about throwing of dice.’  That idea is embraced in the suggestive words ‘aleatory process’ (adopted by Mr. Motley), but previously applied in a speech made in the Senate on the question of ratifying the treaty.”

Charles Sumner’s Speech on the Johnson-Clarendon Treaty, April 13, 1869: 

“In the event of failure to agree, the arbitrator is determined ’by lot’ out of two persons named by each side.  Even if this aleatory proceeding were a proper device in the umpirage of private claims, it is strongly inconsistent with the solemnity which belongs to the present question.”

It is “suggestive” that the critical secretary, so keen in detecting conversational inaccuracies, having but two words to quote from a printed document, got one of them wrong.  But this trivial comment must not lead the careful reader to neglect to note how much is made of what is really nothing at all.  The word aleatory, whether used in its original and limited sense, or in its derived extension as a technical term of the civil law, was appropriate and convenient; one especially likely to be remembered by any person who had read Mr. Sumner’s speech,—­and everybody had read it; the secretary himself doubtless got the suggestion of determining the question “by lot” from it.  What more natural than that it should be used again when the subject of appealing to chance came up in conversation?  It “was an excellent good word before it was ill-sorted,” and we were fortunate in having a minister who was scholar enough to know what it meant.  The language used by Mr. Motley conveyed the idea of his instructions plainly enough, and threw in a compliment to their author which should have saved this passage at least from the wringing process.  The example just given is, like the concession of belligerency to the insurgents by Great Britain, chiefly important as “showing animus.”

It is hardly necessary to bring forward other instances of virtual misrepresentation.  If Mr. Motley could have talked his conversation over again, he would very probably have changed some expressions.  But he felt bound to repeat the interview exactly as it occurred, with all the errors to which its extemporaneous character exposed it.  When a case was to be made out against him, the secretary wrote, December 30, 1870: