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 of his government, more attentive to the
interests of his country, and more capable of uniting the most
vigorous performance of his public duties with the high-bred
courtesy and conciliatory tact and temper that make those duties
easy and successful. Mr. Motley's successor will find his mission
wonderfully facilitated by the firmness and discretion that have
presided over the conduct of American affairs in this country during
too brief a term, too suddenly and unaccountably concluded.'”
No man can escape being found fault with when it is necessary to make out a case against him. A diplomatist is watched by the sharpest eyes and commented on by the most merciless tongues. The best and wisest has his defects, and sometimes they would seem to be very grave ones if brought up against him in the form of accusation. Take these two portraits, for instance, as drawn by John Quincy Adams. The first is that of Stratford Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe:—
“He is to depart to-morrow. I shall probably see him no more. He
is a proud, high-tempered Englishman, of good but not extraordinary
parts; stubborn and punctilious, with a disposition to be
overbearing, which I have often been compelled to check in its own
way. He is, of all the foreign ministers with whom I have had
occasion to treat, the man who has most severely tried my temper.
Yet he has been long in the diplomatic career, and treated with
governments of the most opposite characters. He has, however, a
great respect for his word, and there is nothing false about him.
This is an excellent quality for a negotiator. Mr. Canning is a man
of forms, studious of courtesy, and tenacious of private morals. As
a diplomatic man, his great want is suppleness, and his great virtue
is sincerity.”
The second portrait is that of the French minister, Hyde de Neuville:—
“No foreign minister who ever resided here has been so universally
esteemed and beloved, nor have I ever been in political relations
with any foreign statesman of whose moral qualities I have formed so
good an opinion, with the exception of Count Romanzoff. He has not
sufficient command of his temper, is quick, irritable, sometimes
punctilious, occasionally indiscreet in his discourse, and tainted
with Royalist and Bourbon prejudices. But he has strong sentiments
of honor, justice, truth, and even liberty. His flurries of temper
pass off as quickly as they rise. He is neither profound nor
sublime nor brilliant; but a man of strong and good feelings, with
the experience of many vicissitudes of fortune, a good but common
understanding, and good intentions biassed by party feelings,
occasional interests, and personal affections.”
It means very little to say that a man has some human imperfections, or that a public servant might have done some things better. But when a questionable cause is to be justified, the victim's excellences are looked at with the eyes of Liliput and his failings with those of Brobdingnag.