“The Republican Senators have selected for the Chairman of this Committee the Hon. Charles Sumner, a statesman deservedly honored in this country, not only for his eloquence as an orator, but for his unswerving fidelity to the cause of Freedom. No man could have been chosen for this office in every respect more acceptable to the English people. It is not only as the Antislavery legislator, who, from the first moment that he took his seat in the Senate as the representative of Massachusetts, has ever raised his voice and given his vote for the hapless negro,--it is not only as the patriot who almost suffered martyrdom on the floor of the Senate Chamber from the ruffian hand of Preston S. Brooks, that the English people will be disposed to regard his appointment with hearty approval: he has established other claims to our sympathy and admiration, which we must not be slow to recognize. Mr. Sumner is well known in this country--scarcely less, indeed, than in America--as the stanch friend of Peace. Years ago, in his famous oration on the True Glory of Nations, he set forth the advantages of a pacific policy, with arguments as cogent and irresistible as those which have been employed by Mr. Cobden, and with an eloquence of language and a fertility of illustration which revived the oratory of classic times.… “And if during the period of Mr. Lincoln’s administration causes of dispute should unhappily arise between America and Great Britain, or any other foreign power, Mr. Sumner will not fail to point to _arbitration as the only reasonable and satisfactory mode_ of settling international differences. _He will not, if he can help it, permit San Juan to be made a casus belli_, or tolerate any more of those periodical expeditions against the weak and effeminate republics of South America, by which Mr. Buchanan and his predecessors treated with contempt the solemn injunctions of the Fathers of the Republic, that their posterity should avoid the fatal quicksands of European diplomacy, and abstain from intermeddling with the affairs of other states.” The very questions anticipated by the London journal were presented at an early day, even before its article could reach Washington. The advice of the Senate was asked by the President on submitting the San Juan Question to arbitration. March 16, 1861, the following Message from President Lincoln was read in Executive Session, and on motion of Mr. Sumner referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. “TO THE SENATE:--