The defence could not have fallen into better hands.  Bearing a name which is, in itself, a title to the confidence of the American people, a diplomatist familiar with the rights, the customs, the traditions, the courtesies, which belong to the diplomatic service, the successor of Mr. Motley at Vienna, and therefore familiar with his official record, not self-made, which too commonly means half-made, but with careful training added to the instincts to which he had a right by inheritance, he could not allow the memory of such a scholar, of such a high-minded lover of his country, of so true a gentleman as Mr. Motley, to remain without challenge under the stigma of official condemnation.  I must refer to Mr. Jay’s memorial tribute as printed in the newspapers of the day, and to his “Appeal” published in “The International Review,” for his convincing presentation of the case, and content myself with a condensed statement of the general and special causes of complaint against Mr. Motley, and the explanations which suggest themselves, as abundantly competent to show the insufficiency of the reasons alleged by the government as an excuse for the manner in which he was treated.

The grounds of complaint against Mr. Motley are to be looked for:—­

1.  In the letter of Mr. Fish to Mr. Moran, of December 30, 1870.

2.  In Mr. Bancroft Davis’s letter to the New York “Herald” of January 4, 1878, entitled, “Mr. Sumner, the Alabama Claims and their Settlement.”

3.  The reported conversations of General Grant.

4.  The reported conversations of Mr. Fish.

In considering Mr. Fish’s letter, we must first notice its animus.  The manner in which Dickens’s two old women are brought in is not only indecorous, but it shows a state of feeling from which nothing but harsh interpretation of every questionable expression of Mr. Motley’s was to be expected.

There is not the least need of maintaining the perfect fitness and rhetorical felicity of every phrase and every word used by him in his interview with Lord Clarendon.  It is not to be expected that a minister, when about to hold a conversation with a representative of the government to which he is accredited, will commit his instructions to memory and recite them, like a school-boy “speaking his piece.”  He will give them more or less in his own language, amplifying, it may be, explaining, illustrating, at any rate paraphrasing in some degree, but endeavoring to convey an idea of their essential meaning.  In fact, as any one can see, a conversation between two persons must necessarily imply a certain amount of extemporization on the part of both.  I do not believe any long and important conference was ever had between two able men without each of them feeling that he had not spoken exactly in all respects as he would if he could say all over again.