question to any foreign state. Her Majesty's Government conceive that if they were to act otherwise they would endanger the position of neutrals in all future wars.

"Her Majesty's Government, however, are ready to consent to the appointment of a commission, to which shall be referred all claims arising during the late civil war, which the two powers shall agree to refer to the commission.".

1

These declarations of Earl Russell led Mr. Seward not only to decline his proposition for the creation of a joint commission, but also to say that whatever the United States had thought or might still think as to "umpirage between the two powers," no such proposition as that made in 1863 would thenceforward "be insisted upon or submitted to by this government." In a subsequent instruction to Mr. Adams, marked "confidential," Mr. Seward said that there was not a member of the government, nor, so far as he knew, any citizen of the United States, who expected that the country would in any case waive its demands upon the British Government for the redress of wrongs committed in violation of international law.3

Earl Russell's absolute and abrupt refusal to Feeling in England. discuss the question of liability for the Ala bama claims was felt in England to have been a mistake. It was perceived that the subject was one that involved something more than the construction of British statutes and the question of indemnities-that it involved sub-✓ stantial questions of law and practical questions of international conduct which Her Majesty's Government might consider without abating anything of "the dignity and character" of the Crown, and without ceasing to be "the sole guardians of their own honor." In the summer of 1866 the House of Representatives of the United States unanimously passed a bill to repeal the inhibitions in the neutrality laws against the fitting out of ships for belligerents. The avowed object of this measure was to gauge the future neutrality of the United States by the course of conduct which resulted in the issuance of the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers from British

Dip. Cor. 1865, part 1, p. 545.

2 Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams, September 20, 1865, Dip. Cor. 1865, part 1, p. 565; same to same, November 4, 1865, id. 630; see also Dip. Cor. 1865, part 1, p. 613, and Lip. Cor. 1866, part 1, pp. 1-28.

3 Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams, February 14, 1866, Dip. Cor. 1866, part 1, p. 66. 4 Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward, February 15, 1866, Dip. Cor. 1866, part 1, P. 67.

5627-32

ports to prey on American commerce.' The ultimate consequences of such a form of retaliation it was impossible to estimate; but it did not require much reflection to show that they might be most disastrous. As time wore on these obvious considerations of interest, as well as the sincere desire felt by many persons in England for more cordial relations with the United States, began to find public expression. Late in August 1866 a letter, probably written by Mr. Olyphant, a member of Parliament, who had lately been in the United States, appeared in the London Times, in which the writer, referring to the action of the House of Representatives and to the refusal of Earl Russell to arbitrate the Alabama claims, expressed the hope that it was not yet too late to retrieve that statesman's errors.3

At this time Earl Russell was no longer Official Expression. foreign secretary, and his successor, Lord Stanley, was understood to be favorable to the amicable settlement of the pending differences. By November 1866 the question of reopening the Alabama claims had not only become a topic of general discussion in the English press, but it was announced that the government contemplated the appointment of a royal commission to inquire generally into the operation of the British neutrality laws. Indeed, Lord Derby, the prime minister, at the inauguration of the lord mayor of London, at Guildhall, on the 10th of that month, intimated that a proposition for the arrangement of the differences touching the Alabama claims would be favorably entertained, and this intimation was followed by leading articles in the Times, in which it was suggested that Earl Russell's rejection of Mr. Adams's demands proceeded on a "somewhat narrow and onesided view of the question at issue," which would in the end make neutrals the sole judges of their own obligations, and that the claims would not be forgotten by the American people till they had been "submitted to some impartial adjudication."8

1 Dip. Cor. 1866, part 1, pp. 156-166.

2 Bemis's American Neutrality: Its Honorable Past, Its Expedient Future (Boston, 1866), ably expressed the objections to the repeal of the neutrality laws, and argued for their consolidation and improvement.

3 Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward, August 23, 1866, Dip. Cor. 1866, part 1, p. 174. Dip. Cor. 1866, part 1, pp. 147, 166, 177–203.

5 Id. 212.

6 Id. 210.

7 Dip. Cor. 1867, part 1, pp. 1-3.

Id. 43; London Times, January 9, 1867.

On the 7th of January 1867 Sir Frederick Lord Stanley's Pro- Bruce, the British minister at Washington, posal. communicated to Mr. Seward a copy of an instruction of the 30th of the preceding November, in which Lord Stanley said that while it was impossible for Her Majesty's present advisers to abandoned the ground taken by former governments so far as to admit liability for the Alabama claims, they would not be disinclined to adopt the principle of arbitration, provided that a fitting arbiter could be found, and that an agreement could be reached as to the points to which the arbitration should apply. But with regard to the alleged premature recognition of the Confederates States as a belligerent power, it was, he said, clear that no reference to arbitration was possible, since the act complained of was one as to which every state must be held to be the sole judge of its duty. At the same time Lord Stanley called attention to the numerous British claims growing out of the war.'

While Mr. Seward did not object to the Mr. Seward's Reply, remedy of arbitration, he declined to accept it with the limitations which Lord Stanley proposed. He insisted that the whole controversy should be submitted just as it was found in the correspondence between the two governments, without imposing any conditions or restrictions on the arbitrator, and without waiving any principle or argument on either side. The United States could not, said Mr. Seward, waive before the arbitrators the position they had constantly maintained from the beginning, "that the Queen's proclamation of 1861 which accorded belligerent rights to insurgents against the authority of the United States, was not justified on any grounds, either of necessity or moral right, and therefore was an act of wrongful intervention, a departure from the obligation of existing treaties, and without the sanction of the law of nations." 3

For this reason Mr. Seward declined Lord Mr. Seward's Position Stanley's proposition for a limited reference. on the Belligerency But it should be observed that, while he reQuestion. fused to waive the question as to the general course of conduct of the British Government during the war,

1 Dip. Cor. 1867, part 1, pp. 183, 188.

2 Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams, January 12, 1867, Dip. Cor. 1867, part 1, pp. 45-45.

3 Same to same, November 29, 1867 (id. p. 179).

he did not present it as a subject for pecuniary reparation, apart from the claims of indemnity for individual sufferers. On the contrary, he contended that it should be presented to the arbitrators as one of the grounds on which Great Britain's liability to individual claimants might be maintained. In an instruction to Mr. Adams of the 13th of January 1868 he defined his position on the subject in these terms:

"Lord Stanley seems to have resolved that the so-called Alabama claims shall be treated so exclusively as a pecuniary commercial claim as to insist on altogether excluding the proceedings of Her Majesty's government in regard to the war from consideration in the arbitration which he proposed.

Mr. Seward's Suggestion.

"On the other hand, I have been singularly unfortunate in my correspondence if I have not given it to be clearly understood that a violation of neutrality by the Queen's proclamation and kindred proceedings of the British Government is regarded as a national wrong and injury to the United States; and that the lowest form of satisfaction for that national injury that the United States could accept would be found in an indemnity, without reservation or compromise, by the British Government to those citizens of the United States who had suffered individual injury and damages by the vessels of war unlawfully built, equipped, manned, fitted out, or entertained and protected in the British ports and harbors in consequence of a failure of the British Government to preserve its neutrality."! In the instruction from which the foregoing passage is quoted Mr. Seward adverted to the various questions, other than that of the Alabama claims, which were pending between the two governments, and remarked that any one of them might "at any moment become a subject of exciting controversy." The naturalization question was, he said, "already working in that way." The trial and conviction at Dublin, on a charge of treason-felony, of certain Irish-Americans who had been engaged in a Fenian expedition, and the judicial denial to them, on the ground that they still remained subject to their original allegiance, of a jury de medietate linguæ, which would have been accorded to a native citizen of the United States, had produced and was continuing to produce an excitement that, to borrow Mr. Seward's picturesque phrase, extended "throughout the whole country, from Portland to San Francisco and from St. Paul to Pensacola." Under the circumstances, Mr. Seward intimated "that

1 Dip. Cor. 1868, part 1, p. 141.

* Id. 143.

Her Majesty's Government, if desirous to lay a broad foundation for friendly and satisfactory relations, might possibly think it expedient to suggest a conference, in which all the matters referred to might be considered together," and a "comprehensive settlement" attempted "without exciting the sensibilities" that were "understood to have caused that government to insist upon a limited arbitration in the case of the Alabama claims." Mr. Adams was instructed to communicate "these explanations" to Lord Stanley informally, but with the distinct understanding that the United States should not be considered "as proposing to open a new negotiation in regard to the questions referred to, or any of them."1

Naturalization Question.

Though public opinion in Great Britain was daily becoming more favorable to the settlement of the Alabama claims, the question that caused at this particular juncture the most uneasiness in the United States was that of naturalization. The advocates of the doctrine of voluntary expatriation were strengthened by the eventful conclusion by George Bancroft, on the 22d of February 1868, of the convention with the North German Union, by which the naturalization of German subjects in the United States, after an uninterrupted residence of five years, was recognized. Mr. Seward now suggested the settlement of of the naturalization question between the United States and Great Britain on the lines of this convention; and he expressed the opinion that if this should be done, and the San Juan question should be referred for arbitration to the Government of Switzerland, the existing irritation would be so far relieved that the Alabama and other claims could be adjusted in a manner unexceptionable in either country.3

Resignation of Mr.
Adams.

In December 1867 Mr. Adams resigned the position which he had filled with so much honor and usefulness, but his retirement from his post was delayed till the following May.

Mission of Reverdy
Johnson.

On the 12th of June 1868 Mr. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, a man eminent both in the law and in polities, was commissioned for the difficult task of acting as Mr. Adams's successor.

Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams, January 13, 1868, Dip. Cor. 1868, part 1, p. 142. Same to same, March 7, 1868, Dip. Cor. 1868, part 1, p. 159.

3 Same to same, March 23, 1868, Dip. Cor. 1868, part 1, p. 183.