Have been compelled to advise the Treasury that their management and delay is destroying the public credit. Men will not contract with the government if in violation of good faith they are kept out of their pay for months after it is due. Mr. Fessenden has not yet returned.
At the Cabinet-meeting to-day Mr. Seward inquired of me in relation to some captured cotton claimed by the French. I told him I had no recollection of it, but, if a naval capture, it had been sent to the courts for adjudication. This, he said, would not answer his purpose. If they had no business to capture it, the French would not be satisfied. I remarked that neither would the courts, who, and not the State or Navy Departments, had exclusive jurisdiction and control of the matter; it was for the judiciary to decide whether the capture was good prize, and whether, if not good prize, there was probable cause, and to award damages if there had been a flagrant wrong committed.
As Mr. Seward has no knowledge of admiralty or maritime law or of prize proceedings, I was not displeased that Mr. Bates took up the matter and inquired by what authority he or the Executive Department of the government attempted to interfere with a matter that was in court. Seward attempted to reply, but the Attorney-General was so clearly right, and Seward was so conscious of his inability to controvert the law officer, that he flew into a violent rage and traversed the room, said the Attorney-General had better undertake to administer the State Department, that he wanted to keep off a war, he had kept off wars, but he could not do it if he was to be thwarted and denied information. I told him he would have all the information we had on the subject, but it was no less clear that until the judicial remedies were exhausted there should be no Executive interference, no resort to diplomacy or negotiations.
It was to me a painful exhibition of want of common intelligence as to his duties. He evidently supposes that his position is one of unlimited and unrestrained power, that he can override the courts and control and direct their action, that a case of prize he can interfere with and withdraw if he pleases. All his conversation exhibited such utter ignorance of his own duties and those of the court in these matters that one could scarcely credit it as possible. But it has been so through his whole administration of the State Department.
My impression was, on witnessing his outbreak and hearing his remarks, that, having the senatorship in view, he was proposing to leave the Cabinet, and I am by no means certain that he has not some thoughts of such a step,— men aspiring for office often have strange fancies, and, in his wild fancy and confidence in the ability and management of his friend Weed, thinks that he can indorse him into the Chicago Convention a fortnight hence. This last I do not suppose, and yet there is design in what took place. “There were,” said he, “twenty-eight Senators who undertook to expel me from the Cabinet, but they did not succeed. I have been here to keep the peace and I have done it so far. You,” turning to the Attorney-General, may get another and have war,” etc., etc., etc.
