I have mentioned only one sally in this painful document; but the whole, besides its prevailing offensiveness, shows inconsistency with actual facts of my own knowledge, which is in entire harmony with the recklessness toward me, and attests the same spirit throughout. Thus, we have the positive allegation that the death of Lord Clarendon, June 27, 1870, “_determined the time_ for inviting Mr. Motley to make place for a successor,”[99] when, in point of fact, some time before his Lordship’s illness even, the Secretary had invited me to go to London as Mr. Motley’s successor,--thus showing that the explanation of Lord Clarendon’s death was an after-thought, when it became important to divert attention from the obvious dependence of the removal upon the defeat of the San Domingo treaty. A kindred inconsistency arrested the attention of the London “Times,” in its article of January 24, 1871, on the document signed by the Secretary. Here, according to this journal, the document supplied the means of correction, since it set forth that on the 25th June, two days before Lord Clarendon’s death, Mr. Motley’s coming removal was announced in a London journal. After stating the alleged dependence of the removal upon the death of Lord Clarendon, the journal, holding the scales, remarks: “And yet there is at least one circumstance, appearing, _strange to say_, in Mr. Fish’s own dispatch, which is _not quite consistent_ with the explanation he sets up of Mr. Motley’s recall.” Then, after quoting from the document, and mentioning that its own correspondent at Philadelphia did on the 25th June “send us a message that Mr. Motley was about to be withdrawn,” the journal mildly concludes, that, “as this was two days before Lord Clarendon’s death, which was unforeseen here and could not have been expected in the States, _it is difficult to connect the resolution to supersede the late American Minister with the change at our Foreign Office_.” The difficulty of the “Times” is increased by the earlier incident with regard to myself. Not content with making the removal depend upon the death of Lord Clarendon, when it was heralded abroad not only before the death of this minister had occurred, but while it was yet unforeseen, the document seeks to antedate the defeat of the San Domingo treaty, so as to interpose “weeks and months” between the latter event and the removal. The language is explicit. “The treaty,” says the document, “_was admitted_ to be practically dead, and was waiting only the formal action of the Senate, _for weeks and months_ before the decease of the illustrious statesman of Great Britain.”[100] Weeks and months! And yet during the last month, when the treaty “was admitted to be practically dead,” the Secretary who signed the document passed three hours at my house, pleading with me to withdraw my opposition, and finally wound up by tender to me of the English mission, with no other apparent object than simply to get me out of the way.