The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-05-15

breast of a man of spirit by an attempt to die
tate TO him his morals and his manners. It Is
natural enough that Englishmen, seeing in Mr..
Sumner the official head of the Committee on
Foreign Relations Of the United States Senate.
and. one of the recognized leaders of the party
which the people of this country chose TO put
into power again at the last Presidential cle'-
tion, should take his uttcrauces to be the oX-
preston of the dominant sentiment of Americl.
IL is equally natural that finding those utter
anCes to be insuiterably insOcut In tone, they
should infer that the American people desire to
provoke and insult Great Britain. This, we need
not say, the American people do not desire
TO DO. 1t is not the eXtray agancc rs they esteem
il, of the claims made upon England in this pre-
postelous speech, much as the tone in which
those demands are made. which has stirred The
passi, ms of the British people so profoundly.
ENtrayagaut claims may be debated at least.
Moral impCrtinCncC makes debate humiliation.
Could we believe that Mr. Sumner was conscious
of the moral impertinence of his haraugu5 about
the Alabama claims, that he really meant to be
morally inn crtinent to England, we might think
wore than we now do Of his disposition but we
should certainly think better Of his abilities
man may lie a statesman. even If he be ~ wrong
headed one, who deliberately sets about making
u war possible between two nations, or two sec
tiOns of nation, among men. McuschtEott did
this very thing in his influence upon the foreign
policy of Russia before the Crimcau war; Thicrs
tried to do this in his influence upon the foreign
policy oi France in 1870. Russia suffered
fcayully from the success of the one; France
other. But both were men capable of policy,
men who cou d proportion their means TO their
ends, and will the eud deliberately when they
set about deliberately using the means IL is our
calamity that conspicuous American State
should keep In so conspicuous place as that
which Mr.. Sumner occupies in the Senate man
who Is incapable of all this. The fool OF the
Scrip iurc scattered iTebrauds and death, think
ing ii sport. Mr.. Sumner sows dragons teeth
! thinking them to be merely flowers of rhetoric.
That he is person destitute of coherent and
steady convictions appears very clearly from
his action in regard to that question OF peace
! OF which. Tor Il long time, he assumed to
| lie the special organ and advocate in this
country. 1t is hardly more than twenty
| years since Mr.. Sumner shocked and
startled Boston on n Fourth Of July by getting
| up in Fancuil Hall to insult the memory of the
| Patriots of the Revolution by sweeping denun-
! Citations OF war in all its forms organized
| brutality ana murder on a colossal scale. 1t is
not yet twenty years since he caused his name
to be published abroad as a leading American
delegate to the first Congress OF Universal
! Peace held in Paris Before he did these things
| he had expended great deal OF labor unsuccess-
| fully on al attempt to rouse the United States
| to war on the questions involved in the
| famous 'Quintuple Treaty concerning the
| slavetladc Since he did these things he has
! expended, alas how much labor, and alas! how
| successfully. upon an attempt to plunge the
! american people into tic horrors of the blood
lest lntcruGcine war ever WaTed i'm modern
times within the borders of IL civilized nation.
81
| intellectual fOrcc-a Virile person understanding
what he says, and measuring the scope of his
| language-would be to suppose HIM one of the
worst most hypOCrtical and most sanguinary
of men. We believe this would be to do him
less lhan justice morally and far more than JUS
ticc Intellectually.
Unquestionably, his name will go down into
history as that of the man who, more than any
other public man of his time, contributed to fan
into blaze of hatred the alienation of feeling
caused by diversity of interest and of policy
between the Northern and the Southern people
of this country. UnquestiOnably, too should
England and America come to blows upon the
Alabama question, or upon any other question,
j history will iasten uIon Mr.. Sumner the charge
of having gangrcned by his licentious and Vitu-
pcrative rhetoric, English dissatisfaction with
american pretensiOns into English resentment
OF American arrogance. Yet nobody more
| anxious than MIR. Sumner when he first entered
| tie Senate to secure social recognition from and
establish social relations with the representa-
uNCs OF the Southern people; and never was u
man more amazed than he when he found those
representatives dsinclined TO cordially eutrcat
Tie person who daily berated them and their
constituents assassins of liberty, saye-driverS,
and traders in human blood. And throughout
his whole career Mr.. Sumner has manifested an
almost morbid thirst for the applause and admi-
ration OF the better classes Of that English peO-
pie by whom he has now succeeded in getting
himself recognized as the ideal enemy Of the
British lion-the incarnate Elijah Pogram of the
| New World.
been once plainly, though good-naturedly, told
him TO his face by an eminent foreign diplomat
now no longer living. According to we'll
known habit ef his Mr. Sumner had asked this
! gentleman his opinion of a recent effort" in
the Senate. "Frankly' responded the diplomat,
who wasmuch too indolent as well as too honest
to be at the pains of diplOmatizing in such q
case frankly, Mr. Sumner think yOnr speech
dCtestable. | think most of your recent speeches
dCtestable. Personally, ] consider you (pardon
me Tor the candor show Il very kind-hearted,
well-intentoned man. But your speeches will
scause you to be regarded in history as Il sort
of Couthon, or st. just Marat. | can't help
thinking the reason is that you don't appreciate
the force ofwords'
Speeches made to prove to a British audience,
by citations froih POybius, Iacitus Don QuiX-
ote, and Ovids 'MctamOrphoses," that every
owner of slaves must necessarily be a cdput
tup1tdnp, or to demonstrate to q listening Senate
in secret session that Engand's encouragement
OF the Rebel belligerency had brought her in
debtor TO us by equity to the amount of half
the national debt, are for Mr.. Sumner mere eX-
ercisCs in rhetoric. They are something more
to the people who hear them, and who consider
words TO be not counters but coin. Sumner
speaking on the one theme helped to make
every Southeruer believe the North a land
breathing forth only death and ruin to him and
to his. Sumner speaking on the other is doing
a like work in England.
But the philanthropy of Massachusetts kept
him at the one work till the land was drenchcd
with lratcrnal blood. VIII it keep him at tho
other till the ocean also shall be shaken with
the thunders of battle between the two foremost
naval pioneers OF commerce aud OF civilization
FIRE AND BURGLAR PROOF SAFE
Gsgssl,5 FIRE. SKATING RINK. FIRE