Mr. Chamberlain made a very powerful speech on the same
amendment, and by it elicited one of the most helpless speeches,—if it were fairly reported,—from Sir John Rigby, the Solicitor-General, which we ever remember to have read. Mr. Chamberlain reminded Mr. Gladstone that he himself had despatched an embassy to the Pope without any regular credentials, and had paid him with a baronetcy, if with nothing else ; and that Mason and Slidell were irregular emissaries from the Slave States to Europe who might have easily turned the scales in relation to the fate of the Confederate States. Benjamin Franklin was not accredited when he went to Paris to obtain the recognition of the United States; and yet he obtained that recognition, and secured the alliance of France for his Republican Government. This the Solicitor-General admitted, but only pleaded that, on the whole, the safeguards of the Bill were very solid safeguards indeed. Just about as solid, we think, as "the cloud-capp'd towers" and all the "unsubstantial pageant" of Prospero's vision.
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