Mr. Dana's nomination as Minister to England by the United
States has finally been vetoed by the Senate, on pretences in- credibly petty, which Mr. Smalley, the able London corre- spondent of the New York Tribune, exposed in a vigorous letter to yesterday's Times. The first excuse for vetoing Mr. Dana's appoint- ment was a very technical dispute on a legal question of copy- right, in which., as the latest editor of Wheaton's "International Law," Mr. Della has been engaged with a former editor of that book, Mr. W. B. Lawrence,—a dispute in which, whether he turns out to be legally right or wrong, there is not the slightest question of ethics or honour in any way involved. A further excuse, of probably even greater effect, was a letter which Mr. Dana wrote to Mr. Boutwell, on 16th March last, in which he refused to ask to be heard in his own defence before a Committee of the Senate which had given a secret ex parte hearing to his enemies without inviting him to state his own side of the case, and had even gone so far as to act on that ex parte statement by recommending to the President to withdraw his nomination, and intimating that it would be disapproved if the President insisted on it. This letter was spoken of as disrespectful to the Senate, and no doubt cost Mr. Dana several Republican votes. His nomination was disapproved by 36 against 17, eleven Republicans deserting their party to vote against him,—their real objection to him being, says Mr. Smalley, their disapprobation of "the intru- sion of an honourable man ' inside politics." That is a bitter word. For of course, all who resent "the intrusion of honour- able men ' inside politics," resent at least as strenuously the intrusion of honourable politics inside men.
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