The Daily Dispatch: November 5, 1863., [Electronic resource]

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Bounders of Secretary Seward.

--Mr. Seward, says the New Orleans Picayune, has more than once been detected in his plagiarisms from the writings of Alexander Hamilton and others, of the first era of the Republic. And now, besides some very adroit plagiarisms of other ideas, he is also convicted of some very gross blunders in his recent diplomatic circular. For instance, as noted by a New York cotemporary:

Such mistakes as placing Prince Rupert's Island near the head waters of the Mississippi; calling the motto of the Garter the motto of the British National Arms; attributing to Cardinal Richellen the occupation and fortification "of a large portion of this continent, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Straits of Belle Isle," though the Cardinal had been dead a quarter of a century ere the Mississippi was discovered; alluding to the "age of Gameous" as coeval with the introduction of slavery to this continent by Portugal, though the post died half a century before that event. These blunders of his past diplomatic correspondence, the critic thinks, were had enough, but a like ignorance of passing events is inexcusable. Mr. Seward, in his circular, lately published to our Ministers abroad, speaks of an ordinance of emancipation having been adopted in Missouri, which terminated slavery in seven years. The ordinance alluded to does not even pretend to give a slave his liberty short of thirteen years, and leaves at least half the slaves now in Missouri slaves for life.