“Allow me, for the first time of ever addressing you, to thank you for your masterly statement of the Trent matter, which I have just risen from reading in the _Boston Journal_. “You have put the matter in its true light.… “Your speech will shed light, and, in fact, illuminate the whole subject, and should be read by every one. By taking Mason & Co. we were acting on the English law; by giving them up, we act under our own view of what the law should be, and have brought England over to adopting our view.” Hon. Asahel Huntington, the veteran lawyer, wrote from Salem:-- “I am always greatly obliged by your speeches, which you have had the kindness to send me from time to time. They are all gems of the first water, but the ‘Trent’ is the greatest gem of all,--so calm, so full, so exhaustive, so statesmanlike, so Websterian in its statements, structure, and heavy logic, that, on first reading it, before receiving the pamphlet, I had it in my heart to write you at once and express my high admiration of that great passage in your public life. It was a great opportunity, and was met in the true spirit of a controversy between nations on questions of International Law. It was potential for good at home and abroad, and is worthy itself to be trusted as an authority from its own intrinsic weight.” Hon. George Morey, lawyer, and for a long time a political leader in Massachusetts, wrote from Boston:-- “I congratulate you on your having delivered an excellent speech touching our foreign relations, and particularly the case of the Trent.