"ARTICLE II.

"The Commissioners shall then forthwith proceed to the investigation of the claims which shall be presented to their notice. They shall investigate and decide upon such claims in such order and in such manner as they may think proper, but upon such evidence or information only as shall be furnished by or on behalf of their respective Governments. The official correspondence which has taken place between the two Governments respecting any claims shall be laid before the Commissioners, and they shall, moreover, be bound to receive and peruse all other written documents or statements which may be presented to them by or on behalf of the respective Governments, in support of or in answer to any claim, and to hear, if required, one person on each side on behalf of each Government, as counsel or agent for such Government, on each and every separate claim. Should they fail to decide by a majority upon any individual claim, they shall call to their assistance the arbitrator or umpire whom they may have agreed upon, or who may be determined by lot, as the case may be; and such arbitrator or umpire, after having examined the official correspondence which has taken place between the two Governments, and the evidence adduced for and against the claim, and after having heard, if required, one person on each side as aforesaid, and consulted with the Commissioners, shall decide thereupon finally and without appeal.

Nevertheless, if the Commissioners, or any two of them, shall think it desirable that a Sovereign or head of a friendly State should be arbitrator or umpire in case of any claim, the Commissioners shall report to that effect to their respective Governments, who shall thereupon, within six months, agree upon some Sovereign or head of a friendly State, who shall be invited to decide upon such claim, and before whom shall be laid the official correspondence which has taken place between the two Governments, and the other written documents or statements which may have been presented to the Commissioners in respect of such claims.

"The decision of the Commissioners, and of the arbitrator or umpire, shall be given upon each claim in writing, and shall be signed by them respectively, and dated.

"In the event of a decision involving a question of compensation to be paid being arrived at by a special arbitrator or umpire, the amount of such compensation shall be referred back to the Commissioners for adjudication; and in the event of their not being able to come to a decision, it shall then be decided by the arbitrator or umpire appointed by them, or who shall have been determined by lot.

"It shall be competent for each Government to name one person to attend the Commissioners as agent on its behalf, to present and support claims on its behalf, and to answer claims made upon it, and to represent it generally in all matters connected with the investigation and decision thereof. . .

...

It will be observed that by this Convention Great Britain conceded the principle that all claims between the two Governments, "including the 'Alabama' claims," should be submitted to and determined by an independent tribunal, which was to have before it the whole of the official correspondence that had taken place on the subject. It is difficult to conceive any thing fairer than this, and it was much more than the English Government had at first been disposed to yield, or which, in our opinion, it was called upon to grant.

But by the Constitution of the United States no treaty is binding which is not ratified by the Senate, and on the 13th of April that body unanimously, with the exception of one vote, rejected the Convention which Lord Clarendon and Mr. Reverdy Johnson had concluded. Inasmuch as that Convention went far beyond what the Government of this country was disposed to yield, and conceded all the objections which had been taken to the Convention signed by Lord Stanley and Mr. Johnson in November, last year, it is difficult to understand by what reasons the rejection of it could be justified; but so far as we do understand them, they seem to be,—

1. That the "Alabama" claims are mentioned only as it were parenthetically in the Convention, and not put forward with the importance they deserve.

2. That no recognition is there made of the "national wrong and injury to the United States" resulting from the Queen's proclamation of neutrality, and its styling the Confederate States "belligerents."

Upon the subject of these claims on the part of the United States a very important correspondence was published at the latter part of the present year. Before, however, examining it, we should mention that Mr. Reverdy Johnson was recalled by President Grant, and Mr. Motley, the accomplished author of the "Rise of the Dutch Republic," was appointed Minister to Great Britain in his stead. His instructions were to explain to the British Government the circumstances attending the rejection of the "Alabama" Treaty, without committing his own to any particular policy. He was not to propose any settlement of claims, but to secure the temporary postponement of the question, in the hope that, the present excitement subsided, England would invite renewed negotiations. He was not authorized to announce the readiness of the United States to make any propositions, or to demand the payment of claims, but to assure the British Government of the sincere desire of the United States to have the dispute adjusted on terms honourable and satisfactory to both nations. He was also instructed to state that the Neutrality Proclamation was not in itself a cause for demanding compensation, or a separate ground of complaint, but that, taken with subsequent acts, it was unfriendly, as showing a feeling of hostility to America during the late war, and resulting in losses requiring reparation.

Mr. Motley had an interview with the Earl of Clarendon on the 10th of June, when he said that the chief reasons which led to the

rejection of the Claims Convention of January, 1869, by the Senate, were that the time at which it was signed was thought most inopportune, as the late President and his Government were then virtually out of office, and their successors could not be consulted on the question. It was further objected to because it embraced only the claims of individuals, and had no reference to those of the two Governments on each other; and, lastly, that it settled no question, and laid down no principle.

On the 25th of September Mr. Fish, the American Secretary of State, addressed a despatch to Mr. Motley, which he read to Lord Clarendon, on the subject of the claims. This was a long and laboured catalogue of all the alleged grievances of the United States against Great Britain in connexion with the late civil war. Mr. Fish said,

"The President does not deny-on the contrary, he maintainsthat every Sovereign Power decides for itself, on its responsibility, the question whether or not it will at a given time accord the status of belligerency to the insurgent subjects of another Power; as also the larger question of the independence of such subjects, and their accession to the family of sovereign States." But he characterized the declaration of the Queen's Government as "precipitate" and "premature," as having been determined upon on the 6th of May, four days prior to the arrival in London of any official knowledge of the President's Proclamation of the 19th of April, 1861. He alleged also that the word "hostilities," used in the Proclamation, showed that it was not pretended that "war" existed in America, but only a "contest." "Hence the United States felt constrained at the time to regard this Proclamation as the sign of a purpose of unfriendliness to them and of friendliness to the insurgents, which purpose could not fail to aggravate all the evils of the pending contest; to strengthen the insurgents, and to embarrass the legitimate Government. And so it proved; for as time went on, as the insurrection from political came at length to be military, as the sectional controversy in the United States proceeded to exhibit itself in the organization of great armies and fleets, and in the prosecution of hostilities on a scale of gigantic magnitude, then it was that the spirit of the Queen's Proclamation showed itself in the event, seeing that, in virtue of the Proclamation, maritime enterprises in the ports of Great Britain, which would otherwise bave been piratical, were rendered lawful, and thus Great Britain became, and to the end continued to be, the arsenal, the navy-yard, and the treasury of the insurgent confederacy."

With respect to the assertion that the Queen's Government was hampered by the municipal law of its own country, and could not act in seizing the "Alabama" without sufficient evidence of the purpose for which she was destined, Mr. Fish said, "We hold that the international duty of the Queen's Government in this respect was above and independent of the municipal laws of England. It was a sovereign duty attaching to Great Britain as a sovereign Power.

The municipal law was but a means of repressing or punishing individual wrong-doers; the law of nations was the true and proper rule of duty for the Government. If the municipal laws were defective, that was a domestic inconvenience, of concern only to the local Government, and for it to remedy or not by suitable legislation, as it pleased. But no sovereign Power can rightfully plead the defects of its own domestic penal statutes as justification or extenuation of an international wrong done to another sovereign Power.

"When the defects of the existing laws of Parliament had become apparent, the Government of the United States earnestly entreated the Queen's Ministers to provide the required remedy, as it would have been easy to do by a proper Act of Parliament; but this the Queen's Government refused."

He then contrasted the conduct of the United States during the late war between Great Britain and Russia, when the ship "Maury" was arrested by telegraphic order in the port of New York, on complaints with affidavits being filed by the British Consul; and also its conduct in the early stages of the war of the French Revolution; on the occasion of the insurrection of the Spanish-American Continental Provinces; of revolutionary movements with SpanishAmerican Republics; and during the existing insurrection in Cuba. Mr. Fish said that he assumed," pretermitting detailed discussion in this respect," that the negligence of the British Government in the matter of the "Alabama" at least was (6 gross and inexcusable," and "such as indisputably to devolve on that Government full responsibility for all the depredations committed by her. At all events, the United States conceive that the proofs of responsible negligence in this matter are so clear that no room remains for debate on that point; and it should be taken for granted in all future negotiations with Great Britain."

After a lengthy enumeration of the losses and injuries sustained in the war, owing to the alleged unfriendly attitude of Great Britain, Mr. Fish concluded by saying,

"The President is not yet prepared to pronounce on the question of the indemnities which he thinks due by Great Britain to individual citizens of the United States for the destruction of their property by rebel cruisers fitted out in the ports of Great Britain.

"Nor is he now prepared to speak of the reparation which he thinks due by the British Government for the larger account of the vast national injuries it has inflicted on the United States.

"Nor does he attempt now to measure the relative effect of the various causes of injury, as whether by untimely recognition of belligerency, by suffering the fitting-out of rebel cruisers, or by the supply of ships, arms, and munitions of war to the Confederates, or otherwise, in whatsoever manner.

"Nor does it fall within the scope of this despatch to discuss the important changes in the rules of public law, the desirableness of which has been demonstrated by the incidents of the last few years

now under consideration, and which, in view of the maritime prominence of Great Britain and the United States, it would befit them to mature and propose to the other States of Christendom.

"All these are subjects of future consideration which, when the time for action shall come, the President will consider, with sincere and earnest desire that all differences between the two nations may be adjusted amicably and compatibly with the honour of each, and to the promotion of future concord between them; to which end he will spare no efforts within the range of his supreme duty to the right and interests of the United States.

"At the present stage of the controversy, the sole object of the President is to state the position and maintain the attitude of the United States in the various relations and aspects of this grave controversy with Great Britain. It is the object of this paper (which you are at liberty to read to Lord Clarendon) to state calmly and dispassionately, with a more unreserved freedom than might be used in one addressed directly to the Queen's Government, what this Government seriously considers the injuries it has suffered. It is not written in the nature of a claim; for the United States now make no demand against her Majesty's Government on account of the injuries they feel they have sustained.

"Although the United States are anxious for a settlement, on a liberal and comprehensive basis, of all the questions which now interfere with the entirely cordial relations which they desire to exist between the two Governments, they do not now propose or desire to set any time for this settlement. On the contrary, they prefer to leave that question, and also the more important question of the means and method of removing the causes of complaint, of restoring the much-desired relations of perfect cordiality, and the preventing of the probability of like questions in the future, to the consideration of her Majesty's Government. They will, however, be ready, whenever her Majesty's Government shall think the proper time has come for a renewed negotiation, to entertain any proposition which that Government shall think proper to present, and to apply to such propositions their earnest and sincere wishes and endeavours for a solution honourable and satisfactory to both countries."

On the 6th of November, Lord Clarendon wrote to Mr. Thornton, the British Minister at Washington, transmitting to him some observations which he had made on the despatch of Mr. Fish, which Mr. Thornton was to read to Mr. Fish, and allow him to take a copy. These "Observations" answered the allegations of Mr. Fish with crushing force, and showed how inaccurate in point of fact, in some most important particulars, those allegations were. We can here only give a summary of them.

In answer to the statement that the Queen's recognition of "belligerent rights" on the part of the Southern States was "precipitate," as having been determined upon "four days prior to the arrival in London of the President's proclamation of the 19th of April, 1861, and signed on the 13th of May, the very day of the