t Messrs. Adams, Dayton, Burlingame, Schurz and Co. were
detained _awaiting_ Mr. Seward's advices) still more elaborate and
masterly instructions are given out to these gentlemen. The paper to Mr.
Adams will in future years be quoted and referred to as a model history
of the rise and progress of the secession enormity. It may be asked, Why
are such dispatches and instructions needed? Why such elaborate briefs
and compendiums required for gentlemen each of whom may have said,
respecting his connection with subject-matter of the Secretary (none
more emphatically so than Messrs. Adams and Burlingame), _quorum pars
magna fui?_ Yet, it must be remembered that diplomacy, like
jurisprudence (with its red tape common to both), taketh few things for
granted, and constantly maketh records for itself, under the maxim _de
non apparentibus non existentibus eadem est ratio_; and ever beareth in
mind that when _certioraris_ to international tribunals are served, the
initiatory expositions and the matured results must not be subjected to
a pretence of diminution, but be full and complete.

The early dispatch for Mr. Burlingame contains the caustic sentence,
'Our representatives at Vienna seem generally to have come, after a
short residence there, to the conclusion that there was nothing for them
to do, and little for them to learn.' But 'the President expects that
_you_ will be diligent in obtaining not only information about political
events, but also commercial and even scientific facts, and in reporting
them to this department.'

Although the Austrian mantle was soon transferred to the classic
shoulders of Mr. Motley,--another honored Bay-state-ian,--the caustic
reference to predecessors, and the implied compliment of request, did
not at all lose their respective significance.

What a compact statement is contained in the following sentence of the
instructions to the representative of foreign affairs at Vienna!--'The
political affairs in Austria present to us the aspect of an ancient and
very influential power, oppressed with fiscal embarrassments,--the
legacy of long and exhausting wars,--putting forth at one and at the
same time efforts for material improvement and still mightier ones to
protect its imperfectly combined dominion from dismemberment and
disintegration, seriously menaced from without, aided by strong and
intense popular passions within.' A lyceum lecturer might consume an
evening over the present political conditio