He was requested to explain to Lord Clarendon that a portion of his presentation and treatment of the subject discussed at the interview immediately after his arrival was disapproved by the Secretary of State, and he did so in a written communication, in which he used the very words employed by Mr. Fish in his criticism of the conversation with Lord Clarendon.  An alleged mistake; a temperate criticism, coupled with a general approval; a rectification of the mistake criticised.  All this within the first two months of Mr. Motley’s official residence in London.

No further fault was found with him, so far as appears, in the discharge of his duties, to which he must have devoted himself faithfully, for he writes to me, under the date of December 27, 1870:  “I have worked harder in the discharge of this mission than I ever did in my life.”  This from a man whose working powers astonished the old Dutch archivist, Groen van Prinsterer, means a good deal.

More than a year had elapsed since the interview with Lord Clarendon, which had been the subject of criticism.  In the mean time a paper of instructions was sent to Motley, dated September 25, 1869, in which the points in the report of his interview which had been found fault with are so nearly covered by similar expressions, that there seemed no real ground left for difference between the government and the minister.  Whatever over-statement there had been, these new instructions would imply that the government was now ready to go quite as far as the minister had gone, and in some points to put the case still more strongly.  Everything was going on quietly.  Important business had been transacted, with no sign of distrust or discontent on the part of the government as regarded Motley.  Whatever mistake he was thought to have committed was condoned by amicable treatment, neutralized by the virtual indorsement of the government in the instructions of the 25th of September, and obsolete as a ground of quarrel by lapse of time.  The question about which the misunderstanding, if such it deserves to be called, had taken place, was no longer a possible source of disagreement, as it had long been settled that the Alabama case should only be opened again at the suggestion of the British government, and that it should be transferred to Washington whenever that suggestion should again bring it up for consideration.

Such was the aspect of affairs at the American Legation in London.  No foreign minister felt more secure in his place than Mr. Motley.  “I thought myself,” he says in the letter of December 27, “entirely in the confidence of my own government, and I know that I had the thorough confidence and the friendship of the leading personages in England.”  All at once, on the first of July, 1870, a letter was written by the Secretary of State, requesting him to resign.  This gentle form of violence is well understood in the diplomatic service.  Horace Walpole says, speaking of Lady Archibald Hamilton:  “They have civilly asked her and grossly forced her to ask civilly to go away, which she has done, with a pension of twelve hundred a year.”  Such a request is like the embrace of the “virgin” in old torture-chambers.  She is robed in soft raiment, but beneath it are the knife-blades which are ready to lacerate and kill the victim, if he awaits the pressure of the machinery already in motion.