Excerpt from The Diplomatic Year: Being a Review of Mr. Seward's Foreign Correspondence of 1862 Mr. Seward has thrown down ather challenge to the world. He has issued a volume - rather more than twice as thick as the one he printed a year ago - containing his annual correspondence with all the nations of the earth. He invites criticism - or he sets it at defiance; and in neither case, can he or his admirers, (of whom he doubt has some, ) complain, if it be fair and manly. Such is the aim of the following pages - the writer at the outset pledging himself to demonstrate, that Mr. Seward's pretensions to scholarship, to statesmanship, or to enlightened patriotism in dealing with the foreign, or, so far as he has had to do with them, the domestic relations of our afflicted country, are utterly without foundation. One disclaimer the author of these pages thinks it due to himself to make. In this, or any other adverse criticism, he is conscious of motive of private resentment - sense of personal wrong. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.