“Grant then referred to the statement published at an interview with him in Scotland, and said the publication had some omissions and errors.  He had no ill-will towards Mr. Motley, who, like other estimable men, made mistakes, and Motley made a mistake which made him an improper person to hold office under me.”

“It is proper to say of me that I killed Motley, or that I made war upon Sumner for not supporting the annexation of San Domingo.  But if I dare to answer that I removed Motley from the highest considerations of duty as an executive; if I presume to say that he made a mistake in his office which made him no longer useful to the country; if Fish has the temerity to hint that Sumner’s temper was so unfortunate that business relations with him became impossible, we are slandering the dead.”

“Nothing but Mortimer.”  Those who knew both men—­the Ex-President and the late Senator—­would agree, I do not doubt, that they would not be the most promising pair of human beings to make harmonious members of a political happy family.  “Cedant arma togae,” the life-long sentiment of Sumner, in conflict with “Stand fast and stand sure,” the well-known device of the clan of Grant, reminds one of the problem of an irresistible force in collision with an insuperable resistance.  But the President says,—­or is reported as saying,—­“I may be blamed for my opposition to Mr. Sumner’s tactics, but I was not guided so much by reason of his personal hatred of myself, as I was by a desire to protect our national interests in diplomatic affairs.”

“It would be useless,” says Mr. Davis in his letter to the “Herald,” “to enter into a controversy whether the President may or may not have been influenced in the final determination of the moment for requesting Motley’s resignation by the feeling caused by Sumner’s personal hostility and abuse of himself.”  Unfortunately, this controversy had been entered into, and the idleness of suggesting any relation of cause and effect between Mr. Motley’s dismissal and the irritation produced in the President’s mind by the rejection of the San Domingo treaty—­which rejection was mainly due to Motley’s friend Sumner’s opposition—­ strongly insisted upon in a letter signed by the Secretary of State.  Too strongly, for here it was that he failed to remember what was due to his office, to himself, and to the gentleman of whom he was writing; if indeed it was the secretary’s own hand which held the pen, and not another’s.

We might as well leave out the wrath of Achilles from the Iliad, as the anger of the President with Sumner from the story of Motley’s dismissal.  The sad recital must always begin with M-----------.  He was, he is reported as saying, “very angry indeed” with Motley because he had, fallen in line with Sumner.  He couples them together in his conversation as closely as Chang and Eng were coupled.  The death of Lord Clarendon would have covered up the coincidence between the rejection of the San Domingo treaty and Mr. Motley’s dismissal very neatly, but for the inexorable facts about its date, as revealed by the London “Times.”  It betrays itself as an afterthought, and its failure as a defence reminds us too nearly of the trial in which Mr. Webster said suicide is confession.