Mr. J. C. Bancroft Davis, Assistant Secretary of State under President Grant and Secretary Fish, wrote a letter to the New York “Herald,” under the date of January 4, 1878, since reprinted as a pamphlet and entitled “Mr. Sumner, the Alabama Claims and their Settlement.”  Mr. Sumner was never successfully attacked when living,—­except with a bludgeon,—­and his friends have more than sufficiently vindicated him since his death.  But Mr. Motley comes in for his share of animadversion in Mr. Davis’s letter.  He has nothing of importance to add to Mr. Fish’s criticisms on the interview with Lord Clarendon.  Only he brings out the head and front of Mr. Motley’s offending by italicizing three very brief passages from his conversation at this interview; not discreetly, as it seems to me, for they will not bear the strain that is put upon them.  These are the passages:—­

1. “but that such, measures must always be taken with a full view of the grave responsibilities assumed.” 2. “and as being the fountain head of the disasters which had been caused to the American people.” 3. “as the fruits of the proclamation.”

1.  It is true that nothing was said of responsibility in Mr. Motley’s instructions.  But the idea was necessarily involved in their statements.  For if, as Mr. Motley’s instructions say, the right of a power “to define its own relations,” etc., when a civil conflict has arisen in another state depends on its (the conflict’s) having “attained a sufficient complexity, magnitude, and completeness,” inasmuch as that Power has to judge whether it has or has not fulfilled these conditions, and is of course liable to judge wrong, every such act of judgment must be attended with grave responsibilities.  The instructions say that “the necessity and propriety of the original concession of belligerency by Great Britain at the time it was made have been contested and are not admitted.”  It follows beyond dispute that Great Britain may in this particular case have incurred grave responsibilities; in fact, the whole negotiations implied as much.  Perhaps Mr. Motley need not have used the word “responsibilities.”  But considering that the government itself said in dispatch No. 70, September 25, 1869, “The President does not deny, on the contrary he maintains, that every sovereign power decides for itself on its responsibility whether or not it will, at a given time, accord the status of belligerency,” etc., it was hardly worth while to use italics about Mr. Motley’s employment of the same language as constituting a grave cause of offence.

2.  Mr. Motley’s expression, “as being the fountain head of the disasters,” is a conversational paraphrase of the words of his instructions, “as it shows the beginning and the animus of that course of conduct which resulted so disastrously,” which is not “in precise conformity” with his instructions, but is just such a variation as is to be expected when one is talking with another and using the words that suggest themselves at the moment, just as the familiar expression, “hung up on a peg,” probably suggested itself to Lord Clarendon.