Here I must dismiss Mr. Fish's letter to Mr. Moran, having, as I trust,
sufficiently shown the spirit in which it was written and the strained
interpretations and manifest overstatements by which it attempts to make
out its case against Mr. Motley. I will not parade the two old women,
whose untimely and unseemly introduction into the dress-circle of
diplomacy was hardly to have been expected of the high official whose
name is at the bottom of this paper. They prove nothing, they disprove
nothing, they illustrate nothing--except that a statesman may forget
himself. Neither will I do more than barely allude to the unfortunate
reference to the death of Lord Clarendon as connected with Mr. Motley's
removal, so placidly disposed of by a sentence or two in the London
"Times" of January 24, 1871. I think we may consider ourselves ready for
the next witness.

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