Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward.
Sir: The three printed documents relating to America furnished to Parliament by the government were received last week at too late an hour to permit of anything more than simple transmission. You will have read and examined them so carefully before this reaches you as to render much comment from this side superfluous.
The publication has been received here by the press in a somewhat peculiar mariner. Scarcely a word of comment is made upon the case of the gunboat No. 290, but an effort is attempted to affect the treatment of Mr. Mason’s complaints as a species of make-weight against the tacitly assumed neglect of the national obligations towards a friendly nation. The force of this sort of reasoning will doubtless be equally appreciated by both the parties affected by it. I wish it could have some effect in convincing them of the folly of their strife.
[Page 177]The publication of the letter of Lord Lyons, written on the 17th of November, it may be presumed, was scarcely contemplated by him when writing it, and still less by the parties in New York, whose conversation he reports.
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I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.