sion his Lordship admits that expressions had been used in the negotiations which preceded the appointment of the High Commission, and were also used in the Treaty, was presented by Her Majesty's Govern ment, (for by the Treaty a claim can only be laid before the Commission on the part of the Government,) and that, when the United States remonstrated and requested the British Government to withdraw the claim, their remonstrance was unheeded, and the claim was pressed to argument; that the United States demurred before the Commission to its jurisdiction, and the decision of the Commission disposed of what might have been a question of embarrassment.

The claim was put forward as a test case, and was one of a class involving upwards of fifty millions of dollars.

My allusion to it was not in the nature of a complaint of its presentation. Earl Granville has kindly furnished certain dates. From his note we find that it was on the 21st November that he learned that the United States remonstrated against the presentation of this class of claims; that prior to the 6th December he had ascertained from Sir Edward Thornton (who it is known had left England on his return to the United States as early as the 28th day of November) that claims of this class were intended to be excluded, and that the Treaty contained words inserted for that object; that the remonstrance and request of the United States were not considered by Her Majesty's Government until the 11th of December; that a decision thereon was not made until the 14th, (on which day, I may add, the Agent and Counsel of the British Government brought the case to trial in Washington,) and that the announcement of the decision of Her Majesty's Government was not made to you until the 16th December, two days after the case had been adjudged.

These dates illustrate my allusion to this case. The United States calmly submitted to the Commission the decision of its jurisdiction over a claim involving in its principle the question of liability for many millions of dollars, which, it is admitted, had been expressly agreed to be withheld from the province of the Commission, and thereby avoided jeoparding the Treaty, and the serious embarrassment which might have resulted from their undertaking to become the judges in their own behalf.

I cannot pass over without notice the allusion made by Earl Granville to your presence in the House of Lords on the occasion of the debate of the 12th of June last, and the fact that you did not at any time challenge either of the conflicting interpretations of the Treaty expressed on that occasion. I may add that similar reflections upon the conduct of this Government in that relation, uttered by prominent statesmen and newspapers in Great Britain, have been made public, and thus brought to my notice.

To all of these it is sufficient to say that the President does not hold it as any part of his duty to interfere with the differences in the Parliament, or the public press of Great Britain, respecting the true construction of the Treaty. The utterances in Parliament are privileged; the discussion in that high body is looked upon by us as a domestic one. of which this Government has no proper cognizance. If it is bound to take notice, it has the right to remonstrate.

To concede either to a foreign State would be, on the part of a Parliamentary Government, the abandonment of the independence which is its foundation and its great security and pride.

Had you interfered, therefore, either to remonstrate or to demand explanation, you would have exposed yourself and your Government to the very just rebuke which the United States have had occasion to

administer to diplomatic agents of foreign Governments, who, in ignorance or in disregard of the fundamental principles of a Constitutional Government with an independent legislature, have asked explanations from this Government concerning the debates and proceedings of Congress, or of the communications by the President to that body.

You had a right to assume that if Her Majesty's Government desired any official information from you or your Government respecting the Treaty, or desired to convey any information to you or to your Government, they would signify as much in the usual forms of diplomatic intercourse, as was done by Lord Granville in his note to you of February 3. Certain it is that it would have been in violation of recognized diplomatic proprieties had you, on the occasion referred to, taken sides with either of the opposing views of the Treaty uttered on that occasion in Parliament.

Further than this, it appears to me that the principles of English and American law (and they are substantially the same) regarding the construction of statutes and of treaties and of written instruments generally would preclude the seeking of evidence of intent outside the instrument itself. It might be a painful trial on which to enter, in seeking the opinions and recollections of parties, to bring into conflict the differing expectations of those who were engaged in the negotiation of an instrument.

While the United States have nothing to fear from departing from the eminently just rule of law to which allusion has been made, it abstains from such departure.

Very much of the matter so elaborately and ingeniously presented in the memoranda attached to the note of Earl Granville could be fitly and appropriately addressed by the British Government to the Tribunal which is to pass upon the points presented therein. It would require amplification, if not correction of statement, to make it present all the facts essential to a correct judgment, and might require a reply before that Tribunal. It would certainly require explanation as to many of its presentations, and its logic would be denied; but it does not seem to require a reply from me in the form of diplomatic correspondence.

As to what is contained in Part III of that Memorandum, I repeat in substance what I mentioned in my note to you on this subject, of 27th February, that the indirect losses of this Government by reason of the inculpated cruisers are set forth in the American "Case" as they were submitted to the Joint High Commission in the first discussion of the claims on March 8, and stand in the Protocol approved May 4. They were presented at Geneva, not as claims for which a specific demand was made, but as losses and injuries consequent upon the acts complained of, and necessarily to be taken into equitable consideration in a final settlement and adjudication of all the differences submitted to the Tribunal. The decision of what is equitable in the premises, the United States, sincerely and without reservation, surrender to the arbitrament designated by the Treaty.

What the rights, duties, and true interests of both the contending nations, and of all nations, demand shall be the extent and the measure of liability and damages under the Treaty, is a matter for the supreme determination of the Tribunal established thereby.

Should that august Tribunal decide that a State is not liable for the indirect or consequential results of an accidental or unintentional violation of its neutral obligations, the United States will unhesitatingly accept the decision.

Should it, on the other hand, decide that Great Britain is liable to this

Government for such consequential results, they have that full faith in British observance of its engagements to expect a compliance with the judgment of the Tribunal which a solemn Treaty between the two Powers has created in order to remove and adjust all complaints and claims on the part of the United States.

To the judgment of the Tribunal when pronounced the United States will, as they have pledged their faith, implicitly bow. They confidently expect the same submission on the part of the great nation with which they entered into such solemn obligations.

I am, &c.,

I spent some time with his Lordship, occupying myself principally in the endeavor to make him understand how little proper comprehension there is here of the state of public feeling and opinion in the United States. They believe, and the Government has seemed to share in the impression, that there is a very general desire among our people, including the most of our prominent men, that the claims for indirect damages should be withdrawn, and the Arbitrators not asked to consider or decide on them. I explained to Lord Granville that much of this misapprehension comes from the course of the English press, giving prominence as it does to every article, letter, or publication of any sort coming from America or purporting to be written by an American taking the British view of the question, and studiously excluding all that would tend to prove the almost entire unanimity of our press and citizens in support of the position taken by their Government. I warned him against trusting to the correspondence and writing of certain persons and journals that I named, as affording any true exposition of the general sentiment in our country. And I represented to him that both the Government and citizens were much more generally concerned to have all claims of every sort, whether regarded as substantial or shadowy, go to the Arbitrators to be decided upon, so that every existing complaint and grievance might be blotted out and wiped away forever, than they were troubled about either the character or amount of the award to be rendered by the Tribunal.

What was most especially desired, I assured him, was that a decision of the whole question and extent of the liability of a neutral should be arrived at, so that the rule and the law for all might be known in the future.

Indeed, among other things I told Lord Granville frankly that I regretted to have to inform him there were not a few of our best people who were growing so dissatisfied with the position which Her Majesty's Government were now assuming, that they were beginning to say that Great Britain, they supposed, must be permitted to take her course and annul the Treaty, in which event the United States could surmise such an unhappy end of our labors and hopes as well as this Government.

All I said, and there was a great deal of it, was expressed and received in the most friendly manner, and helped to give us, I hope, a better mutual understanding, whether it may have or not any other effect or result. His Lordship, I am more than ever satisfied, is sincerely and painfully earnest in his desire to save the Treaty, and I have no doubt that this is equally true of other ministers.

SIR: It is unnecessary now to consider what action this Government might have taken with regard to the present phase of the Alabama claims question had the British Government calmly presented their views with respect to their construction of the Treaty in relation to what are now familiarly called "the indirect claims." The public discussion which they have thought proper to excite, and the discourteous tone and minatory intimations of some of the utterances of the ministry, impose upon the United States a different line of action from that which might have been adopted in response to a calm presentation of a different construction of the Treaty from that which is entertained by this Government, and of the apprehensions which the imagination of the British public seem to entertain of the possible magnitude of the award that may be made for that class of the claims.

Not doubting the correctness of the position which this Government has occupied, and fully convinced that the "indirect claims" were not eliminated from the general complaint of the United States, I am not disposed to question the sincerity of those who hold to the opposite view.

This Government is very anxious to maintain the Treaty and to preserve the example which it affords of a peaceful mode of settling international differences of the very gravest character.

Neither the Government of the United States, nor, so far as I can judge, any considerable number of the American people, have ever attached much importance to the so-called "indirect claims," or have ever expected or desired any award of damages on their account.

They were advanced during the occurrence of the events of the cruisers' depredations, and pending the excitement and the irritation caused by the conduct of Great Britain. They became more prominently associated with the case during the discussions attendant upon the Johnson-Clarendon Treaty, and its rejection; and it was impossible for the American Commissioners not to lay them as part of the American complaint, and as forming part of the American claims, before the Joint High Commission.

That they were not excepted to by the British Commissioners is no fault of this Government.

Being left in the complaint, and set forth, unchallenged, in the Pro

tocol, (signed only four days before the signing of the Treaty, and when the Treaty was completed in form and substance, and was being engrossed for signature,) they could not be omitted from the "Case."

The United States now desire no pecuniary award on their account. You will not fail to have noticed that through the whole of my correspondence we ask no damages on their account; we only desire a judg ment which will remove them for all future time as a cause of difference between the two Governments. In our opinion they have not been disposed of, and unless disposed of, in some way, they will remain to be brought up at some future time to the disturbance of the harmony of the two Governments.

The United States are sincere in desiring a "tabula rasa" on this Alabama question, and therefore they desire a judgment upon them by the Geneva Tribunal.

In the correspondence, I have gone as far as prudence would allow in intimating that we neither desired or expected any pecuniary award, and that we should be content with an award that a State is not liable in pecuniary damages for the indirect results of a failure to observe its neutral obligations.

It is not the interest of a country situate as are the United States. with their large extent of sea-coast, a small Navy, and smaller internal police, to have it established that a nation is liable in damages for the indirect, remote, or consequential results of a failure to observe its neutral duties. This Government expects to be in the future, as it has been in the past, a neutral much more of the time than a belligerent.

It is strange that the British Government does not see that the interests of this Government do not lead them to expect or to desire a judgment on the "indirect claims;" and that they fail to do justice to the sincerity of purpose, in the interests of the future harmony of the two nations, which has led the United States to lay those claims before the Tribunal at Geneva.

I need not repeat to you the earnestness of the President's desire to prevent a failure of the Arbitration, or any repudiation of a Treaty which is so hopeful of beneficent results, nor need I urge you to continued efforts, by all that is in your power, consistently with the honor and dignity of this nation, to bring about an honorable understanding be tween the two Governments on this question, which has been, as it appears to us, so unnecessarily and unwisely raised, to the imminent peril of an important Treaty.

SIR: At this moment it appears too probable that the Government here will

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take such a course as will put an end to the Arbitration at Geneva and to the Treaty.