Then as to the questions to be referred.

1. Was Lord Russell diligent or negligent in the duties of his office?

2.

Was Sir Roundell Palmer versed in the laws of England, or was he ignorant or partial in giving his opinion to the Government? 3. Ought the Government and Parliament of England to have provided fresh laws to prevent merchant ships leaving their ports until it was proved they had no belligerent purposes?

I feel that England would be disgraced for ever if such questions were left to the arbitration of a foreign Government. A nation's honour must be as dear to her as a Minister's honour must be dear to him.

The question has been the principal object of my thoughts for the last two years, and I confess I think that paying twenty millions down would be far preferable to submitting the case to arbitration.-Yours truly,

RUSSELL.1

Thus, then, to the very end of Lord Palmerston's Administration, Lord Russell entertained, and did not scruple to

The experience which Lord Russell gained in 1861 made him exceptionally cautious in 1863. It was reported that two ironclads were being built at Birkenhead, and Lord Russell wrote from Scotland to Lord Palmerston

Meikleour: September 3, 1863.

My dear Palmerston,-The conduct of the gentlemen who have contracted for the two ironclads at Birkenhead is so very suspicious that I have thought it necessary to direct that they should be detained. The Solicitor-General has been consulted, and concurs in the measure as one of policy though not of strict law.

We shall thus test the law, and, if we have to pay damages, we have satisfied the opinion which prevails here as well as in America, that that kind of neutral hostility should not be allowed to go on without some attempt to stop it.

If you do not approve, pray appoint a Cabinet for Tuesday or Wednesday next. Yours truly, RUSSELL.

Lord Palmerston, however, on consulting the law officers, found that there was no lawful ground for meddling with the ironclads, and suggested that they should be bought for the British navy. Lord Russell thereupon wrote to the Duke of Somerset

Meikleour: September 14, 1863.

My dear Duke,-It is of the utmost importance and urgency that the ironclads building at Birkenhead should not go to America to break the blockade.

They belong to Messrs. Bravay of Paris. If you will offer to buy them on the part of the Admiralty, you will get money's worth if he accepts your offer; and, if he does not, it will be presumptive proof that they are already bought by the Confederates.

I should state that we have suggested to the Turkish Government to buy them;

express, both in public and private, his strong objection to referring the Alabama' claims to arbitration. But, before the close of the Ministry, opinion in the Cabinet was slowly pointing to the expediency of terminating in some such method an unfortunate dispute between two great and kindred nations. The fall of Lord Russell in 1866 was, under such circumstances, calculated to bring the question somewhat nearer to a solution. Lord Stanley, succeeding to the Foreign Office, concluded an arrangement with Mr. Reverdy Johnson, which was formally signed by Lord Stanley's successor, Lord Clarendon, for the settlement of all claims which the citizens of either nation had on the other. The Senate of the United States, however, refused to ratify the treaty which was thus concluded; and Mr. Sumner, in moving its rejection, indulged in language and put forward claims which evidently made a settlement more difficult.

Lord John did not regret the action of the Senate. He

wrote

The fault of the convention signed by Lord Stanley, and by which Lord Clarendon was likewise bound, was that under the vague phrases of Alabama Claims' and 'Arbitration' it would have been open to the United States to contend that the conduct of the British Government had been throughout wanting in good faith, and that an arbiter chosen by lot (perhaps Mr. Sumner) or a foreign power or State, should decide upon points deeply affecting the honour of the British Government.

...

It was fortunate, therefore, that the American Senate should have refused to ratify the convention signed by Lord Clarendon and Mr. Reverdy Johnson.

As matters stand at present, the only peaceable alternatives appear to be a reasonable answer to the claims of the United States, or an agreement to drop the whole question on both sides.

What I would esteem a reasonable answer is one suggested by Mr. Forster. I understand him to say that neither the Secretary of State nor the law officers were in fault, but that the official persons employed at Liverpool were wanting in due diligence, and that this country might, in reparation of that neglect, grant compensation for

but you can easily settle that matter with the Turks, if they bond fide desire to have them and you do not wish to keep them.-Yours truly,

RUSSELL.

the losses incurred by merchants in consequence of captures made by the Alabama.'1

In the meanwhile the march of events was convincing a good many people of the folly of leaving such a question permanently unsettled. The prostration of France in 1870 gave Russia an opportunity for declaring herself no longer bound by some of the provisions of the Treaty of Paris; and, even if this country had been disposed to enter single-handed into a contest with the Russian Empire, the attitude of the United States placed her under securities to keep the peace. Mr. Gladstone's Administration would have incurred a heavy responsibility if under such circumstances it had not made a fresh effort to terminate the embarrassment; and Lord Granville, who became Foreign Secretary on Lord Clarendon's death, ultimately agreed to despatch a commission to Washington to confer with an equal number of commissioners appointed by the United States on the various matters of dispute between the two countries.

Lord Russell was, on the whole, disposed to approve the constitution of the commission. He thought that fairer men than the English commissioners, Lord de Grey (now Lord Ripon), Sir Stafford Northcote (afterwards Lord Iddesleigh), Mr. Mountague Bernard, Sir Edward Thornton, and Sir John MacDonald, could not have been chosen. He was, indeed, a little inclined to resent the presence on the commission of Mr. Fish, the American Secretary of State, who, in a despatch to Mr. Motley-which had been read to, and not answered by, Lord Clarendon-had spoken of the negligence of the British Government to detain the Alabama,' and had declared that Sir William Jones had taught us to regard extreme negligence as equivalent or approximate to evil intentions.

Yet that was Mr. Fish's charge, which seems to have been so

Speeches and Despatches, ii. 260. Three years afterwards Lord Russell used much worthier language: 'I assent entirely to the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice of England that the "Alabama" ought to have been detained during the four days I was waiting for the opinion of the law officers. But I think that the fault was not that of the commissioners of customs; it was my fault as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.' (Recollections and Suggestions, p. 407.)

pleasant to the English commissioners that they were delighted to meet him and to swear eternal friendship.

It was not, however, with the composition of the commission that Lord Russell chiefly found fault. It was with their action, and not with their friendships, that he was ultimately at issue. The commissioners were, in the first place, authorised to preface their negotiations by an expression of regret for the escape of the 'Alabama,' and for the depredations which she had committed; and Lord Russell thought that such an intimation, so made, indirectly reflected on his own conduct in office. The commissioners subsequently proceeded to lay down three rules by which neutral Governments were in future to be bound; and to declare that, though these rules were not in force when the claims arose, in any decision upon them the principles thus laid down should be respected; and Lord Russell not unnaturally thought that it was in the last degree unjust that his conduct as Secretary of State should be judged by rules which were not applicable to it at the time.

Strongly holding these opinions, Lord Russell, on June 12, 1871, moved an address to the Crown praying her Majesty not to sanction or to ratify any convention for the settlement of the "Alabama" claims by which her Majesty will approve of any conditions, terms, or rules by which the arbi trator or arbitrators will be bound, other than the law of nations and the municipal law of the United Kingdom existing and in force at the period of the late civil war in the United States when the alleged depredations took place.'

In moving this address Lord Russell was careful to point out that he had no objection to offer to the appointment of arbiters, or even to asking the arbitrators whether he was justified in not detaining the Alabama' in the interval between the 24th and the 29th.

1 Under these rules a neutral Government was bound (1) to use due diligence to prevent the fitting out in its territory of any vessel which it had reasonable ground to believe was intended to carry on war against a nation with which the neutral was at peace, and to use like diligence to prevent the departure of any such vessel; (2) not to permit a belligerent to make use of its ports or waters as a basis of operation against another; (3) to exercise due diligence in its own ports and waters to prevent the infraction of these rules.

It is a very fair question whether those five days between the 24th and the 29th were lost by want of due diligence; whether the law officers were entitled to take the time for considering the matter; and whether an order to detain the vessel should have been at once sent down.

On both these points he had evidently altered the opinions which he had held in 1865. But he still objected to the agreement to try these questions by an ex post facto law. And his objection was increased by the circumstance that our commissioners had ignored the claims which Canada was making against the States.

Everything has been concession on our side, and assertion, I may say without argument, on the part of the United States. Our commissioners did not trouble the American commissioners to go into any argument; they merely, as I read the protocols, accepted the assertion that they could not entertain the question of compensating the Canadians for the Fenian outrages, on which an order was sent from London that that point should not be insisted upon. So too with regard to the Fisheries.

Lord Granville, in replying to this passage of Lord Russell's speech, said—

The noble Earl said that the United States had made no concessions; but in the very beginning of the protocols Mr. Fish [renewed] the proposition he had made before to much larger national claims [i.e. to the so-called indirect claims]. . . . These were pretensions which might have been carried out under the former arbitration; but they entirely disappear under the limited reference, which includes merely complaints arising out of the escape of the 'Alabama.'

A good many people thought that Lord Russell's position was logically impregnable, and that he was right in contending that it was neither politic nor just that the conduct of public men should be judged by rules not applicable to it at the time. But even many of those, who, in this respect, felt with Lord Russell, were gratified by the prospect of terminating an irritating dispute with a friendly country. It seemed worth while to go a very long way to meet the wishes of a great, a growing, and a kindred nation. Lord Russell's address had consequently no chance of acceptance; and the arbitration to which the Washington commission had agreed went on.