“They felt it right to reprint the very able speech delivered by Mr. Charles Sumner on the affair of the Trent, because, while explicitly surrendering every right on the part of the American Government, as respects that transaction, he does so on such broad principles as in the judgment of the Committee it would be greatly to the advantage of all civilized states to adopt and act upon in their relations with each other. Copies of this pamphlet were sent to all Members of Parliament, and to a large number of newspapers and periodicals throughout the kingdom.”[115] The character of the attack by the _Times_ will be seen by a few passages from a leader, January 25, 1862. “The last mail has brought us another attempt, made in a speech five columns long by Mr. Charles Sumner in the American Senate. This gentleman is, perhaps, the one American who has been most petted and fêted over here. Mr. Charles Sumner was the greatest drawing-room lion of his day, and his mane was combed by a thousand delicate hands, often held up in admiration at his gentle roarings. In America he has arrived at the high distinction of Senator for Massachusetts and Chairman of the Committee for Foreign Affairs; but after the very general hilarity throughout Europe caused by Mr. Seward’s diplomatic _fiasco_, it seems to have been thought necessary to put some one forward to make ‘a scathing exposition of British inconsistency,’ and to show what a victory over the old country had been obtained. So Charles Sumner is the man.… Mr. Sumner has not done his work ill. But then he had peculiar facilities for it. ‘Who best has known them can abuse them best.’ Moreover, his audience at Washington was not difficult. Gentlemen who could congratulate themselves on Bull Run required no cogent reasons for seeing a glorious triumph, first in the seizure of the Trent, and then in the compulsory surrender of the prize.… No wonder, then, that Mr. Charles Sumner’s speech in the Senate has been a great success. We are told that all the foreign ambassadors--except only Lord Lyons, whom nothing but severe diplomatic etiquette kept away--came round him and congratulated him; and that after its delivery, ‘our respected mother, England,’ is ‘left out in the cold,’--whatever that may mean. The two points which seem especially to have been admired are, first, ‘the absence of any allusion in his speech to the Negro Question,’--showing that he is by no means so obstinate upon that matter as had been feared,--and, second, ‘the signal rebuke he administered to England.’ We can go some way with Mr. Sumner’s encomiasts in this admiration.