1860. July 24.—Judge Longstreet has issued a letter addressed to the International Statistical Congress about their gross conduct in applauding Lord Brougham. It is printed in the Morning Chronicle, and evinces considerable ability and tact. I shall not be surprised if, on this sensitive topic, my countrymen, who never can be rational about it, should consider me as having too tranquilly submitted to the remark of Brougham. One of them here wishes I had “jumped to my feet and knocked the old blackguard down!” This is not “ma manure d’agir.” First, it would have been great folly to imply, by word or act, that the question of slavery in the United States could legitimately be discussed before the American Minister at a European Congress of any sort. Second, the Congress was unanimously and vociferously hostile; the words of Brougham were cheered loudly; it was palpable that the act was the result of a contrivance between Brougham and his associate to get up an altercation between the latter and myself, which was defeated by my treating the movement with silence. Third, quitting the room was impossible, because my doing so was physically impeded, and would instantly have been followed by loud and prolonged indignities. Fourth, to attempt, at a moment of sudden astonishment and indignation, to vindicate the United States from the slur thrown out, would have been extremely imprudent and AT hazardous; no man is authorized to commit his country in a manner so unprepared. Fifth, my individual opinion as to the races being unequal in intellect is strong, but the point has never been studied, and could not be handled in the slightest manner without exhibiting weakness. Sixth, a foreign Minister cannot be justified or excused in taking the attitude of a public declaimer in a Congress where he was only an invited guest, and where such a topic was not only not to be anticipated, but wholly out of order. Indeed, such are my convictions that I have thanked Heaven frequently and profoundly that I had presence of mind enough to take the course I did. Brougham has attempted in the very Congress itself, and only two days after his extravagance, a feeble and unsatisfactory apology; he has sought me that he might apologize in person, and has been turned from the door. He is now perpetually inculcating that what he did was not intended to be disrespectful to me or the United States, and that it should be regarded as insignificant.
Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, United States Minister to England 1856 to 1861
1860. July 21.—The Peers don’t approve their troublesome “chartered libertine” Brougham. Shaftesbury writes. Lansdowne comes to make impressive assurances. And Overstone denounces ore rotundo.
1860. July 20.—Lord Brougham called at ten A.M. I had just time to tell my servant to refuse me. He is so old, and has been so remarkable a man in his day and generation, that I have to remind myself of his offence, and of his aggravating it by the form and manner of his pretended explanation, or I could scarcely screw my mind up to the point of turning him from the door. He came a second time, between twelve and one. I was then at the Kensington Museum, and my secretary, receiving him with the utmost deference, was, nevertheless, silent. He said once or twice, “You know who I am? Lord Brougham, Lord Brougham!” He went to the front door, and then returned in the front office, and remarked, “You know you don’t treat your negroes as well as they are treated in the Brazils!”
The treat I enjoyed at the Kensington Museum was one of the richest I have had in England. The Turners, the Hogarths, the Leslies, etc., are all delightful.
What an admirable reply to Lord Grey is that Fourth of July speech of Everett’s. He has literally overwhelmed Grey in the spirit of truth and moderation.
Received a note from Lord Shaftesbury, hoping that I won’t report to my government the “very foolish and very unwarrantable conduct of Lord Brougham”! This advice is about as silly as Lord Harry’s act, and perhaps much less excusable.
1860. July 18.—Judge Longstreet, the United States Delegate to the International Congress, sent yesterday his written withdrawal, in consequence of Lord Brougham’s conduct.
There is no telling to what this outrage may lead. Brougham is already feeling the weight of a unanimous public opinion. He attempted to-day to make an explanation or apology; said he meant no disrespect to me or my government, and then, with a fatuity scarcely comprehensible, went on to make the matter worse. Is he, on this question of slavery, deranged?
Dr. J—, the delegate sent by the Statistical Association of Massachusetts, called upon me. He said he came from Lord Brougham, and was by him authorized to remove any impression that I might have imbibed that he intended to wound my feelings. I interrupted Dr. J—, and said that I could receive nothing from Lord Brougham at second-hand; if he wished to do what was right and restore the state of things his folly had disturbed, he must make an ample and distinct apology for the insult upon the United States; he must do this in the very body where he had made the attack, and what he said should be sanctioned and approved by that body; if this was satisfactorily done, the personal indignity to myself would melt into nothing before the infirmities of his great age. Alas! that an American citizen should have witnessed, as Dr. J— did, this outrage upon his country, and yet be so bent upon his wretched statistical essay or report as to prefer reading this last to resenting the former. Dr. J— distinguishes: says Lord Brougham’s act don’t touch him, because he is from a free State! “Out upon such half-faced fellowship!”
186o. July 16.—The International Statistical Congress opened its fourth session to-day in this city. I had declined being a member, when invited a month ago by the President of the Board of Trade, Mr. Milner Gibson. On Saturday last the Committee of Organization sent special cards to the members of the Corps diplomatique, and, in order to manifest my respect for the Prince Consort, I went to hear his opening address. Lord Brougham took the opportunity, after the delivery of the address, which was really very good, abruptly to call out to me by name, and hoped I would observe that there was “a negro in the assemblage!” I perceived instantly the grossness of the act, and, seeing the black in the very centre of the philosophers, hadn’t a doubt that it was a premeditated contrivance to provoke me into some unseemly altercation with the coloured personage. I balked that by remaining silent and composed. The gentleman of colour, however, rose, and requested permission of the Prince Consort, as chairman, to thank Lord Brougham for his notice, with an emphatic conclusion, “I am a man.” Query: Is not the government answerable for this insult? Or must it be regarded as purely the personal indecency of Lord Brougham? Curia advisare vult.
1860. June 2.—Dined at Miss Gamble’s, Chevalier Wykoff’s grossly calumniated friend. She has fortune, is living nearly opposite to us in an exceedingly well-arranged and handsome house, and her dinner was irreproachable. Over the mantel-piece of the dining-room she had an interesting cast, given to her by the poet Rogers, of Mercury bearing Pandora in his arms to the earth.
An armistice between Garibaldi and the Neapolitans: the latter to quit Sicily with their twenty-five thousand men in a week.
Definite and full accounts to-day from the Republican Convention at Chicago. They have nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, for President, and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, for Vice-President: both of one geographical section, the free North. Lincoln is as absolutely self-made as our democracy could desire. He began life as a day-labourer, and took to making fence-rails.
1859. November 3. — ….The alleged insurrection and seizure of the Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, of which we received an imperfect account last week, remains still a source of anxiety.
Several fatal storms have recently caused many disasters on the coasts; one of them wrecked the Royal Charter from Australia with a host of passengers on board, and nearly did the same for the Great Eastern riding near the Breakwater at Holyhead. The Channel fleet, too, was in great danger off the Scilly Light, and was only saved by consummate old English seamanship.
1859. June 30.—Ball at Buckingham Palace last evening. Leopold of Belgium, the Count of Flanders, and the Prince of Oporto were present. The Prince of Wales, too, on his return from Rome and travels, looking more manly and much improved, though still very boyish and undersized.
Lord Clarence Paget, Milner Gibson, Monckton Milnes, and Charles Villiers were surprised by my telling them of Cobden’s arrival, and a general solicitude spread through the ballroom to know if he would enter the Cabinet.
Had a long talk in the refreshment-room with Lord Stanley, who begged me to explain the precise principle upon which turned the difference between the Douglas faction of the Democratic party and the extremists of the South. He took it in immediately, and said it was a difference fraught with very large, practical consequences.
Mr. Cobden’s speech, highly complimentary and grateful towards the United States, appears fully reported in the Times of this morning.
1859. February 4.—The day devoted to home despatches. The Times makes this morning an annoying blunder about my cordially shaking hands at the opening of Parliament with the Minister of Hayti, although a man of colour. The poor fellow was not present at all, and I have never interchanged a recognition or word with him. He is, as I have often noticed, a very well-behaved mulatto, about whom I would never dream of doing or saying an unkind thing.
1858. August 24.—Had a long and interesting visit from Lord Brougham. He was born in 1778, and is, therefore, eighty years of age; and yet he conversed with the ardour and energy of a man of forty. He was, made a peer in 1830. I told him that I had met him at the table of Alexander Baring (since Lord Ashburton) forty-four years ago. He remembered the dinner and Mr. Gallatin. He said I reminded him of what occurred between Metternich and himself two or three years since; they were introduced, and he (B.) expressed his delight at meeting one whom he long desired the honour of knowing. “Why,” said M., “I have known you these forty years.” “How’s that? how’s that?” asked B. “Why, you came to see the Congress of Vienna, and do you remember a young man, with slim legs and light-blue stockings, who was amazingly busy?” “Perfectly,” said B. ” Well,” replied M., “that was me!” Much conversation about the slave-trade. He pronounced the claim to visit or search utterly inconsistent with fundamental and universal principles of international law. But he hoped some mode of verifying the flag would be found out and agreed to. “Why not put an end to the trade by passing Cuba over to the United States?” “Well,” he said, “it might come to that.” “As to domestic servitude, your Lordship is aware that its cessation in the United States must be the slow effect of time.” “Certainly, certainly; your wisest men of 1787 put it under the safeguard of your Constitution; and you can’t get rid of it without consequences more dreadful than the thing itself.” Lord Brougham expressed serious apprehensions as to the state of things in France; and regarded this continued sending of squadrons of suspects to Cayenne as fatal to the Imperial dynasty. He said he had asked Malakoff and Fould about it, but they could only say that it was not the act of Napoleon himself, but of those who conceived that to be a way of ingratiating themselves.
