To this, a reply was received from the Secretary of State’s office, signed by Mr. Fish, but so objectionable in its tone and expressions that it has been generally doubted whether the paper could claim anything more of the secretary’s hand than his signature.  It travelled back to the old record of the conversation with Lord Clarendon, more than a year and a half before, took up the old exceptions, warmed them over into grievances, and joined with them whatever the ‘captatores verborum,’ not extinct since Daniel Webster’s time, could add to their number.  This was the letter which was rendered so peculiarly offensive by a most undignified comparison which startled every well-bred reader.  No answer was possible to such a letter, and the matter rested until the death of Mr. Motley caused it to be brought up once more for judgment.

The Honorable John Jay, in his tribute to the memory of Mr. Motley, read at a meeting of the New York Historical Society, vindicated his character against the attacks of the late executive in such a way as to leave an unfavorable impression as to the course of the government.  Objection was made on this account to placing the tribute upon the minutes of the society.  This led to a publication by Mr. Jay, entitled “Motley’s Appeal to History,” in which the propriety of the society’s action is questioned, and the wrong done to him insisted upon and further illustrated.

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.