The outline to be filled up is this:  A new administration had just been elected.  The “Alabama Treaty,” negotiated by Motley’s predecessor, Mr. Reverdy Johnson, had been rejected by the Senate.  The minister was recalled, and Motley, nominated without opposition and unanimously confirmed by the Senate, was sent to England in his place.  He was welcomed most cordially on his arrival at Liverpool, and replied in a similar strain of good feeling, expressing the same kindly sentiments which may be found in his instructions.  Soon after arriving in London he had a conversation with Lord Clarendon, the British Foreign Secretary, of which he sent a full report to his own government.  While the reported conversation was generally approved of in the government’s dispatch acknowledging it, it was hinted that some of its expressions were stronger than were required by the instructions, and that one of its points was not conveyed in precise conformity with the President’s view.  The criticism was very gently worded, and the dispatch closed with a somewhat guarded paragraph repeating the government’s approbation.

This was the first offence alleged against Mr. Motley.  The second ground of complaint was that he had shown written minutes of this conversation to Lord Clarendon to obtain his confirmation of its exactness, and that he had—­as he said, inadvertently,—­omitted to make mention to the government of this circumstance until some weeks after the time of the interview.

He was requested to explain to Lord Clarendon that a portion of his presentation and treatment of the subject discussed at the interview immediately after his arrival was disapproved by the Secretary of State, and he did so in a written communication, in which he used the very words employed by Mr. Fish in his criticism of the conversation with Lord Clarendon.  An alleged mistake; a temperate criticism, coupled with a general approval; a rectification of the mistake criticised.  All this within the first two months of Mr. Motley’s official residence in London.

No further fault was found with him, so far as appears, in the discharge of his duties, to which he must have devoted himself faithfully, for he writes to me, under the date of December 27, 1870:  “I have worked harder in the discharge of this mission than I ever did in my life.”  This from a man whose working powers astonished the old Dutch archivist, Groen van Prinsterer, means a good deal.

More than a year had elapsed since the interview with Lord Clarendon, which had been the subject of criticism.  In the mean time a paper of instructions was sent to Motley, dated September 25, 1869, in which the points in the report of his interview which had been found fault with are so nearly covered by similar expressions, that there seemed no real ground left for difference between the government and the minister.  Whatever over-statement there had been, these new instructions would imply that the government was now ready to go