The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-16 00:00:00

_b. a.'"

tacy might suggest the picture of " a degraded old
man" to an historian who drew the character of

Saint Aldegonde, burgher of Antwerp, once the

bosom friend of William the Silent, for twenty
years a defender of Protestant liberty in the Nether-

lands, but who, finally wearied of the contest, sur-
rendered Antwerp and pleaded the cause of Philip
and of Spanish domination. We can imagine that
the character of Andrew Johnson might inspire a
comparison in the skilful intellect that portrayed
in such glowing colours the profound obstinacy and
bigotry of Philip the Second, and the still darker
shades of his duplicity and falsehood. Nor does
he stoop to affirm, in his reply, that he holds
both President and Secretary in contempt, or to

deny that lie spoke of them in terms unbecoming
a gentleman. But no one who has read the
records of the great struggle of the sixteenth cen-
tury fir freedom and self-government, as illumi-
nated by Mr. Motley's faith in human progress and
larger liberties, can for a moment believe that he
expressed any admiration for English laws and in-
stitutions as compared with those of his native
land. Mr. Seward, as we have said, probably did
not believe it. But he undoubtedly did know and
believe that Mr. Motley had committed one crime
which at the White House is the one unpardonable
sin of Mr. Motley and the loyal people. He did
not endorse the President's policy. An unjust ac-
cusation which might, if it were true, approach to
an excuse for removing him, would answer the pur-
pose of getting rid of him for his real fault, by thus
intimating to him that some pretext was wanting,
and in default thereof he had better resign ; just as
tyrants used to send daggers and poisons to some
obnoxious subject as a hint to despatch himself.
Mr. Motley had the courage to inform Mr. Seward
of his favourable opinion as respects the Constitu-
tional Amendment, and decapitated himself in ac-
cordance with that official's insinuated desire.
This characteristic warfare upon our Minister to
Austria would be a disgrace to a man less capable
by cultivation and intellectual perceptions than Mr.
Seward, of appreciating the honour which is con-
ferred upon the country by a man of such brilliant
talents and erudition as Mr. Motley. It savours
more of the spirit of Preston Brooks' reply to Mr.
Sumner's arguments than of the recognition which
one man of culture has for another, even if there is
an irreconcileable disagreement between them. It
is as petty—as a specimen of revenge for a refusal
to sustain Mr. Seward's recreancy—as the jealousY
and suspicion of Southern barbarians when
Northern school books and school-teachers have
been introduced among them, or when the occult
symbols of phonography have been found
in
possession of the emissaries of Yankee newspaPers•
James I. beheading Sir Walter Raleigh, Francis
Bacon pretending to find treason in the dedicatory
address by Lord Essex, would be companion-pieces.
Mr. Motley has achieved a world-wide reputa-
tion. He has been received with the enthusiastic
applause of his countrymen and of the best critics
of Europe. His vast research, his brilliant style,
his warm sympathies with the heroism he records,
the vigour and vivacity of his descriptions, his
generous and well-sustained enthusiasm, his graphic
reproduction of the great personages that stand forth
in the pageantry of the struggle, have all elicited
the warmest praise from the most respected autho-
rities on either hemisphere. And his works have
not only been pronounced as one of the best contri-
butions to modern history, but as those which do
honour to American literature, and would do lion'
our to the literature of any country in the
world.
In order to drive this gentleman from a position
.
which he filled with distinction to himself an
.1
the Republic, Mr. Seward insulted him. 1°
reward a fawning partisan and a trafficer inn
merchantable principle for official patronage, wile!
the citizens of his own State would no longer tole-
rate, Johnson and Seward must needs seek to def-
grade one who is an ornament to, and a product o
the intellectual development of American institu;
tions. In place of him these two champions of olio
national reputation pushed forward a number of th
renegade alliance which the historian of the Dutch
Republic and the United Netherlands would not
join, and at the forced retirement of one who has
been raised to a peerage of fame with Macaulay and
Grote, with Irving and Prescott, Gibbon and flutnel
Edgar A. Cowan steps forward as a rival claimant.
Even MeGinnis would have been ashamed of that,
and Jack Rogers of New Jersey don't think himself
quite equal to Edmund Burke or Patrick Henry''
Detroit Post.