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as a belligerent cruiser, and this on far less evidence than that which the American Consul at Liverpool exhibited against the "Alabama," the barque "Maury" was arrested within an hour by telegraphic order from Washington. Other examples of the same decision and promptitude, in maintenance of the Sovereign rights and discharge of the neutral duties of the United States, have occurred, as is well known, under both the last and the present administrations.

Nay, at every period of our history the Government of the United States has not been content with preventing the departure of ships fitted out in violation of neutrality, and of putting a stop to military recruitments and expeditions of the same nature, but has further manifested its good faith and its respect for its own sovereignty and laws by prosecuting criminally the guilty parties. Examples of this occur in the early stages of the war of the French Revolution; on occasion of the insurrection of the Spanish-American Continental Provinces and of revolutionary movements in the Spanish-American Republics; and on various other occasions, including the existing insurrection in Cuba.

But although such acts of violation of law were frequent in Great Britain, and susceptible of complete technical proof, notorious, flaunted directly in the face of the world, varnished over, if at all, with the shallowest pretexts of deception, yet no efficient step appears to have been taken by the British Government to enforce the execution of its municipal laws or to vindicate the majesty of its outraged sovereign Power.

And the Government of the United States cannot believe it would conceive itself wanting in respect for Great Britain to impute that the Queen's Ministers are so much hampered by judicial difficulties, that the local administration is thus reduced to such a state of legal impotency as to deprive the Government of capacity to uphold its sovereignty against local wrongdoers, or its neutrality as regards other sovereign Powers.

If, indeed, it were so, the causes of reclamation on the part of the United States would only be the more positive and sure; for the law of nations assumes that each Government is capable of discharging its international obligations, and perchance, if it be not, then the absence of such capability is itself a specific ground of responsibility for conequences.

But the Queen's Government would

not be content to admit, nor will the Government of the United States presume to impute to it, such political organization of the British Empire as to imply any want of legal ability on its part to discharge, in the amplest manner, all its duties of sovereignty and amity towards other Powers.

It remains only in this relation to refer to one other point-namely, the question of negligence-neglect on the part of officers of the British Government, whether superior or subordinate, to detain Confederate cruisers, and especially the" Alabama," the most successful of the depredators on the commerce of the United States.

On this point the President conceives that little needs now to be said, for various cogent reasons. First, the matter has been exhaustively discussed already by this Department, or by the successive American Ministers. Then, if the question of negligence be discussed with frankness, it must be treated in this instance as a case of extreme negligence, which Sir William Jones has taught us to regard as equivalent or approximate to evil intention. The question of negligence, therefore, cannot be presented without danger of thought or language disrespectful towards the Queen's Ministers; and the President, while purposing, of course, as his sense of duty requires, to sustain the right of the United States in all their utmost amplitude, yet intends to speak and act in relation to Great Britain in the same spirit of international respect which he expects of her in relation to the United States; and he is sincerely desirous that all discussions between the Governments may be so conducted as not only to prevent any aggravation of existing differences, but to tend to such reasonable and amicable determination as best becomes two great nations of common origin and conscious dignity and strength.

I assume, therefore, pretermitting de. tailed discussion in this respect, that the negligence of the officers of the British Government, in the matter of the "Alabama" at least, was gross and inexcusable, and such as indisputably to devolve on that Government full responsibility for all the depredations committed by her. Indeed, this conclusion seems in effect to be conceded in Great Britain. 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.

It is impossible not to compare and contrast the conduct of the States General as regards Great Britain, on occasion of the revolt of the British colonies, with that of Great Britain as regards the insurrection in the Southern States. No fleets were fitted out by America in the ports of the Netherlands to prey on the commerce of Great Britain. Only in a single instance did American cruisers have temporary harbourage in the Texel. Year after year the exports of munitions of war from the Netherlands were forbidden by the States General, the more completely to fulfil their duty of amity and neutrality against Great Britain. But, nevertheless, Great Britain treated a declaration of neutrality by the States General, and the observance of that declaration, as a sufficient cause of war against the Netherlands. Prior to which, the British Government continually complained of the occasional supplies derived by the colonies from the Island of St. Eustatius. How light in this respect would have been the burdens of the United States during the late insurrection, if British aid had been confined to a contraband commerce between the insurgents and the port of Nassau!

Not such is the complaint of the United States against Great Britain.

We complain that the insurrection in the Southern States, if it did not exist, was continued, and obtained its enduring vitality, by means of the resources it drew from Great Britain. We complain that, by reason of the imperfect discharge of its neutral duties on the part of the Queen's Government, Great Britain became the military, naval, and financial basis of insurgent warfare against the United States. We complain of the destruction of our merchant marine by British ships, manned by British seamen, armed with British guns, despatched from British dockyards, sheltered and harboured in British ports. We complain that, by reason of the policy, and the acts of the Queen's Ministers, injury incalculable was inflicted on the United States.

Nevertheless, the United States manfully and resolvedly encountered all the great perils and difficulties of the situation, foreign and domestic, and overcame them. We endured with proud patience the manifestation of hostility there where we had expected friendship, in England, the protagonist of the abolition of negro servitude, in order to perpetuate which the Southern States had seceded from the Union. We entered on a great war, involving sea and land; we marched to the field hundreds of thousands of

soldiers, and expended thousands of millions of treasure for their support; we lavished the blood of our bravest and best in battle as if it were but water; we submitted to all privations without a murmur; we staked our lives, our fortunes, and our honour, on the issue of the combat; and by the blessing of God we came out of the deadly struggle victorious, and with courage proved, strength unimpaired, power augmented, and our place fixed among the nations, second to none, we may without presumption say, in the civilized world. Providence had smiled on our sacrifices and our exertions; and in the hour of our supreme triumph we felt that, while mindful of good-will shown us by friendly Powers in the hour of trial, we could afford to account in moderation with others, which like Great Britain had, as we thought, speculated improvidently, and to their own discomfiture, on the expected dismemberment and downfall of the great American Republic.

As to Great Britain, we had special and peculiar causes of grief. She had prematurely, as we deemed it, and without adequate reason, awarded the status of belligerency to our insurgents. But this act of itself, and by its inherent nature, was of neutral colour, and an act which, however we might condemn it in the particular case, we could not deny to be of the competency of a Sovereign State. Other European Governments also recognized the belligerency of the insurgents. But Great Britain alone had translated a measure, indefinite of itself, into one of definite wrong to the United States, as evinced by the constant and efficient aid in ships and munitions of war which she furnished the Confederates, and in the permission of negligence which enabled Confederate cruisers from her ports to prey on the commerce of the United States. Great Britain alone had founded on that recog. nition a systematic maritime war against the United States; and this to effect the establishment of a slave government. As to which, Mr. Bright might well say, "We supply the ships; we supply the arms, the munitions of war; we give aid and comfort to the foulest of crimes; Englishmen only do it." Thus what in France, in Spain, as their subsequent conduct showed, had been but an untimely and ill-judged act of political manifestation, had in England, as her subsequent conduct showed, been a virtual act of war.

We reflected that the Confederates had no ships, no means of building ships, no mechanical appliances, no marine, no R

legal status on the sea, no open seaports, no possible courts of prize, no domestic command of the instruments and agencies of modern maritime warfare; we asked ourselves what would the Queen's Government have said if the United States had awarded the rights of belligerency to insurgents in India or in Ireland in the same circumstances-that is, on the occurrence of a single act of rebel hostility-and had bestowed upon them their only means of maritime as well as territorial warfare against Great Britain.

In truth, while in the hour of their great triumph the United States were thankfully inclined to sentiments of moderation, both at home and abroad, for at home no man has suffered death for political causes, we were the more inclined to moderation, especially as regards Great Britain, in view of the very enormity of the wrongs we had sustained, and the consequent difficulty of measuring the reparation due, even if sincerely proffered by the Queen's Government. We desired no war with England; we shrank from the thought of another lustrum of fratricidal carnage like that through which we had just passed, with no change in the conditions of war, but the substitution on one side of misguided Englishmen in the place of misguided Americans. We preferred, if possible, to find some satisfaction of our great grievances by peaceful means, consistent alike with the honour of Great Britain and the United States.

The influence of this condition of mind is apparent in all the discussions of the subject by or under the instructions of this Department during preceding Administrations of the Government.

It resulted in earnest efforts on our part to determine the controversy by arbitration in the interest of peace and of international good-will, which efforts, if promptly met by the Queen's Ministers in the spirit in which they were made, would long since have removed the present controversy from the field of diplomacy, and effectually harmonized the relations of the United States with Great Britain.

But the amicable advances of the United States to dispose of the question by arbitration were, at the start, and persistently long afterwards, met by Earl Russell in the name of the Queen's Government with subtleties of reservation and exception, the effect of which would have been, instead of closing up the controversy, to leave us in a condition worse than before and more perilous to the cause of peace.

The Government of the United States has never been able to appreciate the force of the reasons alleged in support of such reservations and exceptions. When one Power demands of another the redress of alleged wrongs, and the latter entertains the idea of arbitration as the means of settling the question, it seems irrational to insist that the arbitration shall be a qualified and limited one, through apprehensions lest, peradventure, there might thus be impli cation that such wrongs had been committed by intention, and that such implication would be injurious to the honour of the wrong-doing Government. On these premisses arbitration may be the means of adjusting immaterial international wrongs, but not the material ones that is to say, if the grievances be serious the two nations must of necessity go to war, while neither desires it, which would be an absurd conclusion.

Lord Stanley and Lord Clarendon appear to have seen this, and, therefore, to have regarded the particular question with more correct estimation of its incidents than Lord Russell, and there. upon to have admitted as theory comprehensive arbitration_concerning all questions between the Governments.

But the Convention which, in this view, was negotiated by the Earl of Clarendon and Mr. Reverdy Johnson did not prove satisfactory to the Senate of the United States.

It is well known to the Government of Great Britain that the President and the Senate of the United States are distinct powers of the Government, associated in the conclusion of treaties and in the appointment of public officers, but not dependent one on the other, nor of necessity entertaining the same opinion on public questions. Each acts on appropriate convictions of duty and of right, and the Senate has the same absolute power to reject a treaty as the President has to negotiate one.

Of course it is not necessarily incumbent on the President to express approval or disapproval of an act of the Senate.

But the President deems it due to the Senate, to himself, and to the subject to declare that he concurs with the Senate in disapproving of that Convention. His own particular reasons for this conclusion are sufficiently apparent in this despatch. In addition to these general reasons, he thinks the provisions of the Convention were inadequate to provide reparation for the United States in the manner and to the degree to which he considers the United States entitled to

redress. Other and special reasons for the same conclusion have been explained in a previous despatch, such, namely, as the time and circumstances of the negotiation, the complex character of the proposed arbitration, its chance, agency, and results, and its failure to determine any principle, or otherwise to fix on a stable foundation the relations of the two Governments. 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 demon. strated 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 Govern

ment 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. I am, &c.,

(Signed) HAMILTON FISH.

(No. 4.)

MR. MOTLEY TO THE EARL OF CLARENDON. Legation of the United States, London, October 23, 1869.

My Lord,-In reference to the conversation which I had with your Lordship on the 10th of June last, and to the despatch from the United States' Secretary of State, which I had the honour to read to you on the 15th inst., it may have possibly appeared that there was some inconsistency between the views of the President upon the subjects of the recognition of the late insurgents in the Southern States as belligerents, and the destruction of American commerce by cruisers of British origin carry. ing the insurgent flag, as verbally expressed by me at the interview in June, and those views as set forth in the abovementioned despatch. I think it necessary to inform your Lordship, therefore, that the Secretary of State, on reception of my despatch recounting the substance of the conversation in June, observed to me in a despatch of the 29th of June that it did not seem that the President's view of the right of every Power, when a civil conflict has arisen

within another State, to define its own relations and those of its citizens, had been conveyed in precise conformity to that view, as the Secretary of State desired to present it to me, and as it doubtless would have been conveyed by me had my communication been made in writing.

I would, therefore, request your Lordship to consider the despatch of the United States' Secretary of State, which I read to you on the 15th inst., and a copy of which I have had the honour of sending to your Lordship, as containing the exact and authoritative statement of the President's views on this subject as laid down in all the instructions given under his directions by the Secretary of State.

I pray your Lordship to accept the assurance of the highest consideration with which

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THE EARL OF CLARENDON TO MR. MOTLEY.

Foreign Office, November 5, 1869. Sir, I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 23rd ult., requesting that the despatch from the United States' Secretary of State, which you read to me on the 15th ult., and of which you have been good enough to furnish me with a copy, should be considered as containing the exact and authoritative statement of the President's views, as laid down in the instructions given under his direction on the subjects to which it relates, and I have to state to you that your communication shall receive due attention.

I have at the same time to express to you my regret at the delay which has occurred in acknowledging the receipt of your letter.

(No. 6.)

CLARENDON.

THE EARL OF CLARENDON TO MR. THORNTON.

Foreign Office, November 6, 1869. Sir, Mr. Motley called upon me at the Foreign Office on Friday, the 15th of October, and read to me a despatch from Mr. Fish on the "Alabama" claims.

When he had concluded I said that although I had not interposed any observations, and should not then, in compliance with the wish he had expressed, enter into any discussion on the subject, yet I hoped that my silence would not be considered to indicate that the des

patch did not admit of a complete reply. I requested that he would have the goodness to give me a copy of the despatch, as I could not undertake from memory accurately to report to my colleagues the contents of the long and important document he had just rapidly read to me.

Mr. Motley agreed to do so if I would ask him for it officially, and I accordingly addressed to him, the same afternoon, the letter of which I enclose a copy, and received from him on the afternoon of the 18th a copy of Mr. Fish's despatch, of which I now also enclose you a copy.

This despatch, as you will see, recapitulates at great length the causes of dissatisfaction which the Government of the United States considers itself entitled to feel with the conduct of the British Government during the late civil war; but it does not make any proposition as to the manner in which that dissatisfaction may be removed, or offer any solution of the difficulty.

On the contrary, Mr. Fish distinctly says that 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; neither is he prepared to speak of the reparation which he thinks is due by the British Government for the larger account of the vast national injuries it has inflicted on the United States; neither does he attempt now to measure the relative causes of injury, as, whether by untimely recognition of belligerency, by suffering of the fitting out of rebel cruisers, or by the supply of ships, arms, and munitions of war to the Confederates or otherwise; neither does it fall within the scope of his 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 subjects the President, Mr. Fish says, will be prepared to consider hereafter, with a 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 interest of the United States.

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