posal. The two merits which Gibbon ascribed as those of a historian, diligence and accuracy, they possessed. The ten volumes of the History testify to their diligence; that they rarely, if ever, failed in the correctness of a quotation or a reference is a warrant of their accuracy. Hay was a partisan and he carried partisanship into his historical work, but he aimed at impartiality. "We ought to write," he said, "the history of those times like two everlasting angels who know everything, judge everything, tell the truth about everything, and don't care a twang of their harps about one side or the other." Yet in the same letter he wrote, "I am of that age and imbued with all its prejudices," and "We are Lincoln men all through." 1 Therein lay an unconscious partisanship. Nicolay and Hay made Lincoln out a saint and, when he came into contact with other men, the saint was always right. "No man," Hay wrote in a private letter, "can be a great historian who is not a good fellow." A "good fellow," a genuine man was Hay in every respect. An earnest Republican, he took great interest in politics and coöperated with the managers of the Republican cause in Ohio and in the country at large. Those who knew him best thought that, until McKinley appointed him in 1897, his ability was not appreciated by those high in power, as the offers to him of office were below his merits. He helped Hanna in the nomination of McKinley and when McKinley was elected, among the large number of well-backed aspirants for the English mission, Hanna's voice was for Hay; as Hay jocosely wrote, 1 Thayer, ii. 33. "Hanna is a good judge of men and he recognizes infallibility when he sees it." McKinley named him Ambassador to Great Britain, a position which pleased him immensely and which he was abundantly qualified to fill. McKinley and Hay took to one another, drawn together by an innate sense of refinement, for McKinley appreciated culture. Hay was decidedly a cultivated man. His natural propensity for culture was fostered by the reading of books and by mingling in the best society. Having a notable aptitude for acquiring knowledge at second hand he used this knowledge in his talk with wonderful skill. Always meeting interesting people he absorbed incidents that in turn set off his own conversation. He loved wit and humor and any manifestation of them was to his latest day a passport to his favor. He was a remarkable dinner-table talker and, in a discussion of the subject, a man of wide experience could think only of two shining lights of Boston and Cambridge who were his equal or superior. In August, 1898, McKinley offered Hay the position of Secretary of State for which he had no wish, as he would have preferred to remain Ambassador to Great Britain.1 Thus he wrote during September to his brother-in-law: "I did not want the place and was greatly grieved and shocked when it came- but of course I could not refuse to do the best I could. It was impossible, after the President had been so generous, to pick and choose, and say, 'I will have this and not that.' But I look forward to the next year with gloomy forebodings. 1 The Education of Henry Adams, 364; Life of Hay, Thayer, ii. 173 et seq. Thayer, ii. 183. The correspondence between McKinley and Hay, when Hay's first canal treaty was rejected by the Senate, is honorable to them both. Hay showed consideration for the President in offering his resignation and McKinley in declining it, affirmed his loyalty to his Secretary of State. "Your administration of the State Department," he wrote, “has had my warm approval. As in all matters you have taken my counsel, I will cheerfully bear whatever criticism or condemnation may come." In his sympathetic eulogy delivered before the Congress, Hay rose to a sublime height, as he depicted the ability, moral greatness and success of his master. His countenance was the picture of his mind and heart. "His face," he said, "was cast in a classic mold; you see faces like it in antique marble, in the galleries of the Vatican; ...his voice was the voice of the perfect orator." 2 China, devoted to Oriental civilization, did not wish for Western modern improvements, had no desire for railroads and telegraphs, the importation of English and American cotton fabrics and of American petroleum. She could see no use in them; they disturbed her calculations and her mode of life; she was satisfied to be let alone. To the European nations she seemed inert - a fat goose for the plucking- and therefore, on one account and another, these foreign nations claimed and obtained "spheres of influence or interest." Especially was this the case with Great Britain, Germany and Russia, and, from their point of view, such spheres in China were economically and politically like their own territory. The China trade was important to the United 1 Thayer, ii. 228. 'Memorial Address, Feb. 27, 1902. States and the American manufacturers desired part of the consumption of the three hundred and fifty million Chinese. Did these nations adopt preferential tariffs in their spheres of interest, the American manufacturers would suffer, and for aid they looked to the State Department which was alive to the situation. On September 6, 1899, Hay addressed a note to Great Britain in which his English predilection tallied with her traditional and declared policy for freedom of trade, and he asked her to maintain the "open door" policy which meant that the commerce and navigation of the world should receive equality of treatment within the "spheres of influence or interest." On the same day, he addressed notes to Germany and Russia pleading to these protective tariff countries for the "open door" policy within their spheres of interest, although to them he did not use the term "open door." On November 30 England replied that she would declare for the "open door" provided that the other powers concerned would do likewise. During December Germany and Russia answered, affirming the principle under like conditions. Meanwhile Hay addressed similar notes to Japan, France and Italy, 'from all of whom he received satisfactory answers. This led to his note of March 20, 1900, to the several six nations, giving the course of his negotiations and saying that as each nation had "accepted the declaration suggested by the United States concerning foreign trade in China" he considered the assent of each one addressed "as final and definitive." Hay's sanguine anticipations were substantially realized. 1 Corr. concerning Amer. Commercial Rights in China, Foreign Relations, 1899. But the game of grab had received a check. The worm trodden on will turn. Before 1900, there were mutterings of the coming storm which is known as the Boxer uprising. The Boxers were a secret Chinese society and their name may be freely translated as "The Fist of Righteous Harmony." Sir Robert Hart "looked upon the Boxer movement as a national and patriotic one for freeing China of the foreigners to whom, rightly or wrongly, is attributed all the country's misfortunes during the last half century." 1 Hart was properly called by the Encyclopædia Britannica, an Anglo-Chinese statesman and his remark was made after the suppression of the uprising which had individually cost him much; it stated a condition that the Boxers, dominated by the fanatics, sought to remedy, but the remedy was worse than the disease. The Empress Dowager who sympathized with the fanatical Boxers said in a secret edict, "The various powers cast upon us looks of tigerlike voracity, hustling each other in their endeavors to be the first to seize upon our innermost territories." 2 A Chinese politician declared that the Boxer movement "was due to the deepseated hatred of the Chinese people towards foreigners. China had been oppressed, trampled upon, coerced, cajoled, her territory taken, her usages flouted." While this feeling against foreigners as such was undoubtedly the main cause of the Boxer uprising, it was mixed with antagonism toward Christian missionaries who were trying to convert the Chinese to an alien religion. rial conditions likewise fostered the movement. 1 Foreign Relations, 1900, 207. Nov. 21, 1899. Foreign Relations, 1900, 85. MateIn De |