Such is the history of my relations with the accused. There is nothing to disguise, nothing that I should not do again. I know no rule of senatorial duty or of patriotism which can prevent me from obtaining information of any kind from any body, especially when the object is to pursue fraud and to unmask abuse. Is not a French gentleman a competent witness? Once the black could not testify against the white, and now in some places the testimony of a Chinese is rejected. But I tolerate no such exclusion. Let me welcome knowledge always, and from every quarter. “Hail, holy light!”--no matter from what star or what nation it may shine. And this gentleman, fresh from a confidential service to our own Government, enjoying numerous intimacies with American citizens, associated with illustrious names in history and literature, and immediately connected with one of the highest functionaries of the present French Government, M. de Rémusat, Minister for Foreign Affairs, is insulted here as an “emissary” and a “spy”; nay, more, France is insulted,--for these terms are applied only to the secret agents of an enemy in time of war. But enough. To such madness of error and vindictive accusation is this defence carried! Another charge is that I am making a case for Prussia against our own country. Oh, no! I am making a case for nobody. I simply try to relieve my country from an odious suspicion, and to advance the cause of good government. The Senator from Indiana supposes that this effort of mine, having such objects, may prejudice the Emperor of Germany against us in the arbitration of the San Juan question. The Senator does not pay a lofty compliment to that enlightened and victorious ruler. Nay, Sir, the very suggestion of the Senator is an insult to him, which he is too just to resent, but which cannot fail to excite a smile of derision. Surely the Senator was not in earnest. The jest of the Senator, offered for argument, seems to forget that all these things are notorious in Europe, through the active press of Paris and London. Why, Sir, our own State Department furnishes official evidence that the alleged sale of arms to the French by our Government is known in Berlin itself, right under the eyes of the Emperor. Our Minister there, Mr. Bancroft, in his dispatch of January 7, 1871, furnishes the following testimony from the London “Times”:-- “During the Crimean War, arms and munitions of war had been freely exported from Prussia to Russia; and recently rifled cannon and ammunition have been furnished to the French in enormous quantities, _not only by private American traders, but by the War Department at Washington_.”[3]