It was an insult on the part of the government to have sent Mr. Motley such a letter with such questions as were annexed to it.  No very exact rule can be laid down as to the manner in which an insult shall be dealt with.  Something depends on temperament, and his was of the warmer complexion.  His first impulse, he says, was to content himself with a flat denial of the truth of the accusations.  But his scrupulous honesty compelled him to make a plain statement of his opinions, and to avow the fact that he had made no secret of them in conversation under conditions where he had a right to speak freely of matters quite apart from his official duties.  His answer to the accusation was denial of its charges; his reply to the insult was his resignation.

It may be questioned whether this was the wisest course, but wisdom is often disconcerted by an indignity, and even a meek Christian may forget to turn the other cheek after receiving the first blow until the natural man has asserted himself by a retort in kind.  But the wrong was committed; his resignation was accepted; the vulgar letter, not fit to be spread out on these pages, is enrolled in the records of the nation, and the first deep wound was inflicted on the proud spirit of one whose renown had shed lustre on the whole country.

That the burden of this wrong may rest where it belongs, I quote the following statement from Mr. Jay’s paper, already referred to.

“It is due to the memory of Mr. Seward to say, and there would seem now no further motive for concealing the truth, that I was told in Europe, on what I regarded as reliable authority, that there was reason to believe that on the receipt of Mr. Motley’s resignation Mr. Seward had written to him declining to accept it, and that this letter, by a telegraphic order of President Johnson, had been arrested in the hands of a dispatch agent before its delivery to Mr. Motley, and that the curt letter of the 18th of April had been substituted in its stead.”

The Hon. John Bigelow, late Minister to France, has published an article in “The International Review” for July-August, 1878, in which he defends his late friend Mr. Seward’s action in this matter at the expense of the President, Mr. Andrew Johnson, and not without inferences unfavorable to the discretion of Mr. Motley.  Many readers will think that the simple record of Mr. Seward’s unresisting acquiescence in the action of the President is far from being to his advantage.  I quote from his own conversation as carefully reported by his friend Mr. Bigelow.  “Mr. Johnson was in a state of intense irritation, and more or less suspicious of everybody about him.”—­“Instead of throwing the letter into the fire,” the President handed it to him, the secretary, and suggested answering it, and without a word, so far as appears, he simply answered, “Certainly, sir.”  Again, the secretary having already written to Mr. Motley that “his answer was satisfactory,” the