Mr. Seward to Mr. Motley
Sir: Your very interesting despatch of January 21 (No. 17) has been received. The survey of continental politics which you have taken in this paper is full of instruction. If questions purely dynastic, or of mere administration, or, at most, of political organization, can make and keep so many European nations so unquiet, as to require constant vigilance on the part of their governments, one would expect that they could afford to be tolerant of this government, in its efforts to preserve, in its full efficiency, a system that is so perfect as to be undisturbed by questions of those sorts, and encounters an opposition or resistance from only one disturbing cause, and that one African slavery, which the public sentiment of mankind elsewhere unanimously condemns.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
J. Lothrop Motley, Esq., &c., &c., Vienna.