rrect to use the word Government in this sense, as it is to use the
word Administration. Both words are rightfully so used; and you would
here, I suppose, be in no error in saying 'metonymically' used, if you
have a fancy for that epithet: _Administration_ is 'metonymically' _put
for_ the official persons and acts of the persons who have the direction
of national affairs, and _Government_ is just _as often_ 'metonymically'
put for the same persons and acts--and with _equal right_; for it is
authorized by established usage, which is the supreme law of language.
By what right, then, do you assume to limit the term government to
signifying a 'form of fundamental rules and principles,' or at least to
insist that when used synonymously with administration, it shall _not_
be used to signify the 'persons collectively' by whom the affairs of the
nation are conducted; and when Mr. Crosby uses it--as he obviously
does--in that sense, to talk to him of 'error and confusion?' When Lord
Russell spoke the other day in the British Parliament of 'awaiting an
explanation from the American Government' in the matter of the Peterhof,
and when the London _Times_ spoke of 'the Government at Washington being
anxious,' you might as properly have taken them to task for the 'error'
and 'confusion' of talking as if our 'form of fundamental rules and
principles' could give an explanation, or feel disturbed in mind. Mr.
Crosby had a perfect right to use the word in the sense in which he
obviously did use it. He fell, therefore, into no 'error.' He
'confounded' nothing; he did not identify different things, nor
wrongfully put one thing for another.

In short, your distinction between the Government and the Administration
falls away into a sheer, absurd futility. And well if it escape a
harsher judgment; for when you go about to make irrelevant distinctions
in a plain case, where there is none to be made, and tax your
correspondent (no matter in what soft phrase) with errors and
confusions when he was guilty of none--it will go nigh to be thought by
many an unworthy subterfuge, serving no other purpose than the
fallacious one of shifting the question, and misleading dull minds.

Of the same sort is what you further say in support of this futile
distinction. You talk of the Administration being '_utterly destroyed_
without affecting the health of the Government,' of the Government
'remaining intact, unscathed, while the Administration is _swept out of