The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-12-28
MONDAY, DECEMBER %, 1868.
Secretary Seward and the Alabama
Claims.

that Mr.. Seward is obstrueting the settlement
of the Alabama claims, and thereby endanger-
ing the peaceful relations of Great Britain and
the United States. Yet 1t appears willing that
Mr.. Stewards whims should be humored few
months longer, in the expectation that Mr.
Reverdy Johnson will be retained in his pre-
sent position under General Grants Admins
tration, that the basis of the protocol already
agreed upon by Lord Stanley and Minister
Johnson must remain fixed, and finally that
it's terms will sooner or later command the
consent of both countries. AS the exact prin-
oiples which govern this mysterious basis of a
protocol are not yet matters OF public informa-
tion, we are unable to make any prediction
concerning the probability of the last two
points laid down by the Times; but if M.
Reverdy Johnson has imbued them with his
own spirit, as displayed in his after-dinner
vagaries and overly courteous treatment of
the enemies of his country, we are quite sure
that they will be Indignantly repudiated by
the people and Government whom he so
grossly misrepresents. Concerning the ex-
pectation INDUCED in by the Times, that
General Grants Administration is not likely
to remove Mr.. Johnson, we think that the
sworn enemies of the United States abroad are
destined to undergo bitter disappointment.
Certainly this will be their fate if General
Grant makes any profession of adhering to the
policy long since laid down by him-that of
adopting no policy Of his own which comes in
conflict with the will of the people who have
selected him as their Chief Magistrate.
Concerning the charge which the Times
brings against Mr.. Seward of disposition on
his part to imperil the friendly relations of the
two countries by obstructing the settlement of
the great issue pending between them, we are
quite well assured that injustice is done to our
present Secretary of State. We have been
unable to support the foreign policy of Mr..
Seward in all its details, but as whole we
think that it oommends itself to the American
people, and will receive the justification of his
tory. If it was lacking in any essential ele-
ment, it was in that of frmness, but irmness
is not always the most desirable feature in
foreign diplomacy when it might have led to
international difficulties of serious and COM
plicated character at a time when we had quite
as much on our hands at home as we could
well attend to. Aside from this consideration,
Mr.. Stewards foreign policy has been charac-
terized throughout by forbearance and pa
thence, two features which are quite as COM
mendable in the policy of great nation as in
the disposition of an individual person. To
the credit of the American people,
and of Mr.. Seward as their representative, it
will be recorded for all time to come that the
Great Republic has borne with insult and re-
proaoh from many an upstart principality,
preferring to settle the question of its own
integrity before seeking satisfaction for sights
and impositions which have scarcely disturbed
the even tenor of its way. More than this, it
will be 30 recorded that we have received at
the hands of the great powers of the world
course of treatment which made their profess
sions of friendship hollow mockery and
farce that we have borne all this in the true
interests of human liberty and progress; and
that, by grand and unquestionable triumph
over high handed treason at home, we have
at last reaped the rich fruits of our forbesr-
anoe, the full reward OF our patient waiting,
by beholding all the great powers on their
knees as suitors for the favor of the Great
Republic.
When, therefore, the London Times comes
forward and proclaims Mr.. Seward an enemy
of his country, by charging him with dispo-
siti0n to obstruct the peaceable settlement of
the questions now pending between the United
States and Great Britain, it is guilty of an act
of gross injustice towards statesman who has
done as much as any living man to preserve
the world from the horrors of great inter
national war. We believe that there is not,
and has not been from the opening of the Re-
bellion, man who has striven more anxiously
and equitable relations between the two great
Anglo-Saxon nationalities. The glaring fault
of his foreign policy, if it has glaring fault,
has been too studied effort to give the ma.
tions of Europe and more especially Great
Britain, no cause of complaint against us of
disposition to demand more at their hands
than the law of nations and the dictates of
common sense allow us. The preservation of
peace has been the study of his official career
as Secretary of State, and at times he has
secured il only by sacrifice of national dig
nifty and an imputation upon our national
honor. History will record this fact, and the
London Times cannot gainsay it.
lRosEcRANs-he Of the tortured heart-has at
last arrived at the Halls Of the Montezumas,
and had an audience with President Juarez.
Although things have been going from bad to