MR. SEWARD.

Press, Volume XI, Issue 1433, 12 June 1867, Page 3

MR. SEWARD.

[From the " London Review."] It is about seventeen years since William Henry Seward, just entering upon a senatorial career that afterwards became historical in his own country, was subjected by an opponent to a sharp personal criticism. In reply, he Baid : —" Mr President, I will hot allude to such remarks of the senator who has taken his seat as bear upon my personal conduct, for I do not consider any man's personal affairs worth five minutes of the time of the United States Senate," and at once passed on to a vigorous argument on the subject before the Senate," the effect of which was materially enhanced by the skilful sentence which thus parried his opponent's thrust at himself. Eroin that time the New York statesman has adhered to the rule laid down at the beginning of his career in national politics. He has been repeatedly and bitterly attacked, formerly by Democratic, latterly by Eepublican, politicians; but he has preserved a silence with regard to his own course almost unique in the annals of American politics. Recently, however, the opprobrium which has been heaped upon him by his former political friends has wrung from hira a few words to which his previous reserve gives some pregnancy. In reply to a friend who recently reported to him a statement made by a politician in a public speech, seriously affecting his personal character, the Secretary of State writes : —" So far as I myself am concerned, it is only necessary to say that I have no remembrance of a time during my public life in which less charitable views of my public life and private character were taken by those who differed from mc than thoso which are now presented by opponents o£ the policy which it is my duty to maintain. My first complaint of unkindnesa at the hands of any of my fellow-citizens remains yet to be made, and I think it may with safety be still longer deferred." There is something touching certainly in the modesty and simplicity of these words, and that they have been thus far, without the natural response that they might be expected to evoke from a hearty and generous people, shows that the alienation from him of the party he once led is more profound than he was, perhaps, aware of when he wrote them. So late as 1860, Mr Seward received, in the Eepublican Convention at Chicago, 173 votes out of 465 cast on the nomination of a presidential candidate,including the votes of nine States, among which were the great States of New York and Massachusetts. Though Mr Lincoln received the nomination over him by a small majority, the votes cast for Mr Seward were generally regarded as marking him out for the succession. Six years had rolled away, and when he had passed with President Johnson through New York, the Legislature, which had repeatedly chosen him as their Senator, deliberately struck his name from the resolution welcoming the presidential party to their capital, and their action was applauded by every State that had voted for him at Chicago, where Mr Seward had been

particularly the candidate of the extreme Radicals. Thus he finds himself deserted, in his sixty-sixth year, with but little prospect of ever regaining before the country a position just now so commanding.