they were in the wrong for what their own Foreign Secretary calls "the scandal and the reproach to our laws" of the "Alabama" business? If Earl Russell admits, in the face of the world, that the "Alabama" escaped by "treachery," and says that the Collector of Liverpool put a faith in John Laird's promises that he (Russell) would not have done, is it wonderful that Americans have adopted a conviction that some responsibility ought to fall on that Government which employs such treacherous and untrustworthy officials?

But how has this same British Foreign Secretary, who has made these irrevocable admissions, and who was himself responsible for the escape of the "Alabama," repudiated all approaches to an amicable adjustment of the American grounds of complaint?

I doubt if Englishmen have ever adequately canvassed Earl Russell's rejection of Mr. Adams's proposal to submit the questions between the two countries to arbitration, in the true light in which that rejection should really be made to stand; certainly, on this side of the water, I have never seen his lordship's misstatement of the true issue, and his unfounded claims on behalf of British honor and the supremacy of British law over the law of nations, held up to the rebuke which they justly deserve. If the question between the two nations is of future good understanding about past transactions, and a consentaneous movement together in the direction of reforming each one's separate neutral code for the future, then I submit that it must first be passed upon, whether the United States ought not to have received some different answer to their courteous and friendly proposition, from that actually given by the British Foreign Secretary in October, 1865, when he peremptorily declined to entertain any such proposal.

Says Earl Russell to Mr. Adams, in his letter of Oct. 11, 1865 (British Blue Book, "North America, No. 1, 1866, Correspondence respecting the Shenandoah,'" p. 31):

"In your letter of the 23d of October, 1863, you were pleased to

1 I am obliged to quote from the British publication, as our own Diplomatic Correspondence for the last year (1864-5) has not yet been published.

say that the Government of the United States is ready to agree to any form of arbitration.

"Her Majesty's Government have been thus led to consider what question could be put to any sovereign or state to whom this very great power should be assigned.

"It appears to Her Majesty's Government that there are but two questions by which the claim of compensation could be tested. The one is, Have the British Government acted with due diligence, or, in other words, with good faith and honesty, in the maintenance of the neutrality they proclaimed? The other is, Have the law officers of the Crown properly understood the Foreign-Enlistment Act, when they decline, in June, 1862,1 to advise the detention and seizure of the Alabama,' and on other occasions when they were asked to detain other ships building or fitting in British ports?

"It appears to Her Majesty's Government, that neither of these questions could be put to a foreign Government with any regard to the dignity and character of the British Crown and the British nation.

"Her Majesty's Government are the sole guardians of their own honor. They cannot admit that they may have acted with bad faith in maintaining the neutrality they professed. The law officers of the Crown must be held to be better interpreters of a British statute than any foreign Government can be presumed to be. Her Majesty's Government must therefore decline either to make reparation and compensation for the captures made by the Alabama,' or to refer the question to any foreign state."

6

Now, here, it will be seen, are just two grounds, and only two, on which Earl Russell rejects the offer to afford some satisfaction for the "Alabama" and similar claims; viz., that the claims raise the question of the bad faith of the Government, or that they imply a misconstruction of the Foreign-Enlistment Act on the part of the Crown lawyers; and therefore (for conclusion), as "Her Majesty's Government are the sole guardians of their own honor," that Government will not entertain the proposal.

In contravention of this statement, I venture to assert, that,

No

1 This date of "June, 1862," is probably a mistake for July, 1862. opinion of any law adviser of the Crown (Customs' Solicitor or other) appears to have been furnished earlier than July 1st. The Solicitor of Customs gave the last legal opinion before the sailing of the "Alabama," which is in print, July 22, 1862 (Blue Book, 1863, “North America, No. 3, the 'Alabama,'" p. 2).

from first to last, Mr. Adams never undertook to impugn the good faith or honest purposes of the British Government, in any particular. Throughout, the complaint was of the facts as they had actually occurred, without the slightest imputation of motives on the part of the Government responsible for the occurrence of those facts. Subordinate officials were sometimes referred to as showing some partiality or slackness, but never any charge against the motives of Her Majesty's Ministry. No stickler for diplomatic etiquette could have more scrupulously guarded himself on this head than our well-instructed representative.

Then, as to the charge of imputing to the Crown lawyers a false or erroneous construction of the Foreign-Enlistment Act, nothing could have been further from Mr. Adams's intention or from the language actually employed by him. He never pretended to discuss the British statute at all; and it was no concern of his, from the outset, how the British authorities discharged their neutral duties, provided only that they actually As for the term "Crown lawyers," he never once used the words, or any thing equivalent to them; and I doubt if he has ever alluded to the legal advisers of the Crown throughout his five years' correspondence.

did discharge them.

As for the term

It is very true, that Earl Russell, at an early day, requested Mr. Adams to furnish evidence to aid in putting that law into operation; and also, that, at the time of submitting the preliminary depositions on which Mr. Adams asked for the detention of the "Alabama," he accompanied those depositions with an opinion of a British barrister and Queen's counsel. But Mr. Adams never volunteered an opinion, nor a criticism of any kind, whether this opinion (given by Sir Robert Collier, afterwards Solicitor-General, and ultimately endorsed by the action of the Crown lawyers as just and accurate) was right or wrong, or whether it ought to be weighed by the Crown lawyers at all. His contention was wholly with the Government of Great Britain alone. I have been carefully over the correspondence in this view, and am amazed considering Mr. Adams's delicacy and reticence on the point that Lord Russell should have made such an assertion.

The only point where the Foreign Secretary touches the truc issue raised by Mr. Adams is, where he says, "Have the British Government acted with due diligence, or, in other words, with good faith and honesty, in the maintenance of the neutrality they proclaimed?" But when was it ever heard of in a court of law that "due diligence" was the synonymous equivalent of "good faith and honesty"? If a common carrier were sued for losing a parcel intrusted to his care, would it be said that the question "whether he took proper care of his charge" was synonymous with "whether he had stolen it, or converted it to his own use"? When the United States charge that the “ Alabama" escaped by the negligence of the Liverpool customs officials, or by unwarranted delays at head-quarters, is that charging the British Government with bad faith and dishonest purposes?

Even if Mr. Adams had questioned the seeming good faith of Her Majesty's Government, would not that have been excusable, in view of what Earl Russell has himself said about the "treachery" and the scandal and reproach connected with the (socalled) "escape" of the "Alabama," and "the degree of credulity" with which the Liverpool collector, S. Price Edwards, listened himself, and persuaded the Crown lawyers to listen, to Mr. Laird's subsequent representations about the destination of the iron-clads?-representations which Earl Russell said in debate, in the House of Lords, he had satisfied himself were false, and which he only reproached himself with having noticed.

But will not the British as well as the American reader agree, that it is an unfair and unfounded mixing-up and confoundingtogether of entirely distinct things, to say, that a question of "due diligence" is, "in other words," a question of "good faith and honesty ;" and that it is an equally unfair and unfounded misrepresentation of the true issue involved, to insist that neither that question (of the exercise of due diligence) nor the other question (whether the Crown lawyers have misconstrued the Foreign-Enlistment Act) a charge never made, nor thought of being made, by the American minister-" can be put to a foreign government, with any regard to the dignity and character of the British Crown and the British nation"?

If (as Earl Russell further insists) "Her Majesty's Government are the sole guardians of their own honor," are "treachery" and custom-house proceedings — amounting to "a scandal and a reproach to our laws"-a part of the national honor, for whose vindication Earl Russell must shut the door in the face of a further hearing of the American complaint?

Suppose, too, that Mr. Adams had charged the crown-lawyers with misconstruing the Foreign-Enlistment Act in the case submitted to them, has not Sir Roundell Palmer, while Attorney-General of England, over and over again, in Parliament and the courts of law, avowed that the Alabama" ought to have been stopped on the true construction of that act, and that the only excuse for the British Government was, that Sir John Harding's consulting opinion, as Queen's Advocate, could not be had in sufficient season to act? Earl Russell and Sir Roundell Palmer state the thing differently on this head; Earl Russell ascribing it to the Cabinet secret (of issuing the order for the seizure of the "Alabama") being communicated to Laird or the Confederate agents, in advance, by "treachery," and the Attorney-General attributing it to Sir John's accidental sudden illness. Here, again, would it not be a fair question for umpirage, whether the loss of ten million dollars in value to American commerce, if attributable to such an accident as the illness of the Queen's Advocate, or to the treachery of some scampish official, should be borne by British or by American interests?

Furthermore, if the British Government found means and powers for stopping the iron-clads in September, 1863, in the same state of incomplete armament which the "Alabama" was in for at least five weeks before her departure (the American minister all the while pointing out her warlike character and hostile destination), and the present Attorney-General of England has declared that he could not see how the action of the Government in making that seizure could fail to compromise them into an acknowledgment of the omission of their duty in the instance of the "Alabama," ought the American minister to be blamed for imputing only what Sir Hugh Cairns asserts, upon his professional and parliamentary responsibility, is true,