He Is Equally Kind To Foreign Statesmen,
And Sends To Them Messages As Though From An Altitude Which No
European Politician Had Ever Reached.
At home he has affected the
Prime Minister in everything, dropping the We and using the I in a
manner that has hardly made up by its audacity for its deficiency in
discretion.
It is of course known everywhere that he had run Mr.
Lincoln very hard for the position of Republican candidate for the
Presidency. Mr. Lincoln beat him, and Mr. Seward is well aware that
in the states a man has never a second chance for the presidential
chair. Hence has arisen his ambition to make for himself a new
place in the annals of American politics. Hitherto there has been
no Prime Minister known in the government of the United States. Mr.
Seward has attempted a revolution in that matter, and has essayed to
fill the situation. For awhile it almost seemed that he was
successful. He interfered with the army, and his interferences were
endured. He took upon himself the business of the police, and
arrested men at his own will and pleasure. The habeas corpus was in
his hand, and his name was current through the States as a covering
authority for every outrage on the old laws. Sufficient craft, or
perhaps cleverness, he possessed to organize a position which should
give him a power greater than the power of the President; but he had
not the genius which would enable him to hold it.
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