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

SEWARD'S POLITICO-SYMPATHIES.

The United States are not generally represented
on the continent of Europe by men superior for
anything but an acquaintance with the world or for
success in politics. Even this latter quality is
wanting in those cases when an executive like James
Buchanan or an Andrew Johnson uses these offices
as pensions for his cripples that have been beaten
in a Congressional campaign and pronounced unfit
to represent a constitueucy. 'Those who are now
abroad are, as a whole, a passable set of diplomatic
servants. There's Harvey in Lisbon, to be sure,
who keeps Mr. Seward posted on the State dinners
—the number of plates—the bill of fare—and varies
his epicurean despatches by silty criticisms and
attacks upon the policy of the loyal people. There
is Sandford, too, at Brussels, who has little to do,
and does little except to complain that his mission
is not one of the first class, thereby compelling him
to march behind some of the representatives of smaller
powers on his way to dinner. Mr. Clay at St. Peters-
burg is inclined to screech like the American eagle
and threaten crowned heads with a combined as-
sault from our national bird and the Russian bear ;
but he is quite popular at the Winter Palace. Mr.
Adams at St. James's is a man of considerable talent,
not as enthusiastic a friend of liberty as his father,
but is considered an admirer of Mr. Seward, which
in that gentleman's estimation probably makes up
for other deficiencies. Mr. Wright, at Berlin, is a
politician, who attends to his routine of duties and
does not appear to intrude his opinions on any one.
And the same may be said of the general fitness
and capacity of the others.
But of all these gentlemen, there were two who
especially represented the higher culture of America.
Mr. George P. Marsh, at Florence, has long been
distinguished for his philological researches and his
ripe scholarship in linguistic science. His lectures
on the English language are justly celebrated for a
display of wide learning and critical acumen. Such
a man stepping into the arena of diplomacy which
mere partisans and skilful managers of the caucus
and other election machinery have too often occupied
was calculated to inspire respect for the nation that
had honoured him with its representation at a foreign
court. Him, some one who is designated by Mr.
Seward as " an American gentleman travelling in
Europe," reported as holding Mr. Johnson and Mr.
Seward in disesteem ; and no more inclined than
any other of the intelligent and self-respecting
members of the Republican party to support those
two gentlemen iu their attempts to make the re-
bellion a success. What reason this " American
gentleman" had to especially include Mr. Marsh iu
his report does not appear. Nor are we favoured
with the n .me of the person so solicitous in re-
spect to the views taken of the executive policy
by our Foreign Ministers. He may have been
Slidell ; Jake Thompson, perhaps ; John Wilkes
Booth, possibly, if the rumour of his being alive,
is true; George B. M'Clellan, forsooth, who might
as well have been elected President ; or some other
members of the Democratic party, who, like the
Botany Bay immigrant, have left their country for
their country's good. What punishment was in-
flicted upon Mr. Marsh Mr. Seward fails to report.
But to Mr. Motley, our Minister at Vienna, he
dispatched a copy of the charges made by the
anonymous traveller, who seemed to have
accepted the position of special detective
for the State Department. There is no rea-
son to suppose that Mr. Seward believed all these
charges against the Minister. Mr. Seward's apos-

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 he spoke of them in terms unbeco►ning
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 kaow 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 olcult
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 warmezt praise from the most respected
autho-
rities on either hemisphere. Aud 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 hon-
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 ati.
!
.
the Republic, Mr. Seward insulted him. 1°
reward a fawning partisan and a trafficer 10
merchantable principle for official patronage, whom
the citizens of his own State would no longer tole-
rate, Johnson and Seward must needs seek to de-
grade one who is an ornament to, and a product of,
the intellectual development of American iustitu-
dons. In place of him these two champions of our
national reputation pushed forward a number of the
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 flume,
Edgar A. Cowan steps forward as a rival claimant.
Even MmGinnis 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.