ubt if a Thomas will ever become
a Paul.

_April 24._--Our State Department does not enjoy a high
consideration abroad. I see this from public diplomatic acts, and
from private letters. I am sure that Mr. Dayton has found this out
long ago, and I suppose so did Mr. Adams. Of course not a Sanford.
If the State Department had not at its back twenty-two millions of
Americans, foreign Cabinets would treat us--God, alone, knows how.

_April 24._--I hope to live long enough to see the end of this war,
and then to disentangle my brains from the pursuits which now fill
them. Then goodbye, O, international laws, with your customs and
rules. England handled them for centuries, as the wolf with the lamb
at the spring. When I witness the confusion and worse, here, I seem
to see--_en miniature_--reproduced some parts of the Byzantine
times. All cracks but not the people, and to ---- I am indebted that
my brains hold out.

_April 24._--What a confusion Burnside's order No. 8 reveals; the
president willing, unwilling, shifting, and time rapidly running on.

_April 24._--Senator Sumner, without being called as he ought to
have been--to give advice, discovered the Peterhoff case. The
Senator laid before the President, all the authorities bearing on
the case, showed by them to the President, that the mail was not to
be returned to the English Consul, but lawfully ought to be opened
by the Prize Court. The Senator so far convinced the President, that
Mr. Lincoln, next morning at once violated the statutes, and through
Mr. Seward, instructed the District Attorney to instruct the Court
to give up the mail unopened to England.

Brave and good Sumner exercises influence on Mr. Lincoln.

_April 24._--Every one has his word to say about civilized warfare,
about international warfare, laws of war, etc. In principle, no laws
of public war are applicable to rebels, and if they are, it is only
on the grounds of expediency or of humanity. Laws of international
warfare are applicable to independent nations, and not to rebels.
Has England ever treated the Irish according to the laws of
international warfare? Has England considered Napper Tandy and his
aids as belligerents? The word _war_ in its legal or international
sense ought to have been suppressed at the start from the official,
national vocabulary; to suppress a rebellion is not to _wage a war_.

_April 25._--When the bloody tornado shall pass over, and the normal
condition be restored,