Whitelaw Reid: “He’s the ablest man in the country, and everybody but a blockhead knows it.”

As a foreign critic said in comment on one of the addresses: "The author is one man who knows what he thinks about the new policy required by the new situation in which his country is placed, and has the courage and candor to say it.

I never saw hands more cheerful or contented than some managed on this last plan were.

But why should a sensible man deal with such folly?

Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.