And may we not justly expect the President to unite in such a measure of peace and good-will? He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city; and so the President, ruling his spirit in subjection to the humane principles of International Law and the Constitution of his country, will be greater than if he had taken all the islands of the sea. The Commission appointed under the Joint Resolution visited San Domingo, and their Report, which was favorable to the proposed annexion, the President communicated to Congress; but no further action was taken to carry the scheme into effect. PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH THE PRESIDENT AND SECRETARY OF STATE. AN EXPLANATION IN REPLY TO AN ASSAULT. STATEMENT PREPARED FOR PRESENTATION IN THE SENATE, MARCH, 1871. Si rixa est, ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum. Stat contra, starique jubet; parere necesse est. Nam quid agas, cum te furiosus cogat, et idem Fortior? JUVENAL, _Sat._ III. 289-92. TO THE READER. This statement was prepared in March, shortly after the debate in the Senate, but was withheld at that time, from unwillingness to take part in the controversy, while able friends regarded the question of principle involved as above every personal issue. Yielding at last to various pressure, Mr. Sumner concluded to present it at the recent called session of the Senate, but the Treaty with Great Britain and the case of the Newspaper Correspondents were so engrossing as to leave no time for anything else. WASHINGTON, June, 1871. NOTE. With the failure of an opportunity for the presentation of the proposed statement in the Senate Mr. Sumner’s indisposition to appeal to the public returned with increased strength, manifested, after printing, by limiting the communication of copies to personal friends, with the inscription, “Unpublished,--private and confidential,--not to go out of Mr. ----’s hands.” Says one to whom it was thus confided: “I frequently urged him afterwards to make it public. His reply was, in substance, that he should not do it for personal vindication merely; that, so far as Mr. Motley was concerned, he thought the matter stood well enough before the public; but if the time should come when the ends of justice required its publication, he should remove the injunction of secrecy. While he lived I respected his injunction. After his death I felt that justice to his memory not only justified, but required me to make the ‘Explanation’ public.… Accordingly, after conferring with Mr. Whitelaw Reid, of the ‘New York Tribune,’ I sent it to him, and it was published in that journal of April 6, 1874.”--F. W. BIRD, _Introductory_ to his pamphlet edition, Boston and New York, 1878.