power is used is always open to the scrutiny, and, if it has
been misused, to the condemnation, of a tribunal higher than itself; a
court that never goes out of office, and which no personal feelings, no
lapse of time, can silence.

The ostensible grounds on which Mr. Motley was recalled are plainly
insufficient to account for the action of the government. If it was in
great measure a manifestation of personal feeling on the part of the high
officials by whom and through whom the act was accomplished, it was a
wrong which can never be repaired and never sufficiently regretted.

Stung by the slanderous report of an anonymous eavesdropper to whom the
government of the day was not ashamed to listen, he had quitted Vienna,
too hastily, it may be, but wounded, indignant, feeling that he had been
unworthily treated. The sudden recall from London, on no pretext whatever
but an obsolete and overstated incident which had ceased to have any
importance, was under these circumstances a deadly blow. It fell upon
"the new-healed wound of malice," and though he would not own it, and
bore up against it, it was a shock from which he never fully recovered.

"I hope I am one of those," he writes to me from the Hague, in 1872, "who
'fortune's buffets and rewards can take with equal thanks.' I am quite
aware that I have had far more than I deserve of political honors, and
they might have had my post as a voluntary gift on my part had they
remembered that I was an honorable man, and not treated me as a detected
criminal deserves to be dealt with."

Mr. Sumner naturally felt very deeply what he considered the great wrong
done to his friend. He says:--

"How little Mr. Motley merited anything but respect and courtesy
from the secretary is attested by all who know his eminent position
in London, and the service he rendered to his country. Already the
London press, usually slow to praise Americans when strenuous for
their country, has furnished its voluntary testimony. The 'Daily
News' of August 16, 1870, spoke of the insulted minister in these
terms:--

"'We are violating no confidence in saying that all the hopes of Mr.
Motley's official residence in England have been amply fulfilled,
and that the announcement of his unexpected and unexplained recall
was received with extreme astonishment and unfeigned regret. The
vacancy he leaves cannot possibly be filled by a minister more
sensitive to the honor