Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress with the Annual Message of the President, December 4, 1871

[From the London Times, Saturday, August 5, 1871.]

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When the first debate was held in the House of Lords on the treaty of Washington we felt bound to agree with Lord Russell and Lord Salisbury, in opposition to Lord Granville and Lord Cairns, that it is desirable Parliament should have the opportunity of pronouncing an opinion on treaties while that opinion can still affect the result. We thought it would be a practice inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution that the ratification of a treaty should be delayed until Parliament had had a reasonable time to consider it, and refused if both houses of Parliament should condemn it. Some of the most important engagements ever entered into by the British government received no sanction from the country or its representatives, and have, in consequence, been periodically attacked with the argument, not only plausible, but just, that they were imposed on the nation by the indiscretion of a ministry. Every one admits that Parliament has a right to interfere in matters which so deeply concern the country, and every one must acknowledge that this interference ought to be something more than a futile railing against the government after the mischief is done. The Queen’s plenipotentiaries receive their full powers to negotiate in her name, and to sign as if her own hand were set to the draught of the treaty; but this act of the executive government does not morally bind the nation, which may know nothing of it, though, in fact, it may entail upon us liabilities involving, perhaps, great political danger or immense sums of money, and lasting for generations. In the case of the treaty of Washington accident gave the appropriate opportunity. The treaty was prematurely [Page 472] published, and was not ratified for more than a month afterward, so that the House of Lords were able to discuss the subject, and the Commons had ample opportunity of discussing it. Considering the novelty and importance of the principles established and the procedure instituted, it must be a comfort to those who negotiated the treaty that they will be able to point to the approval of one house and the silence of the other. There can, indeed, be no doubt that the House, of Commons has given the consent that is implied in silence, and that the debate originated by Sir Charles Adderley yesterday in a weary house, at the end of the session, and when the subject has passed from the domain of practical politics, was a purposeless discussion which will possess little public interest.

We have already given our opinion on the treaty of Washington. We believe it to be a useful and honorable treaty, which will bring to a close a wearisome dispute, and make the relations of England and the United States more satisfactory than they have been for years. That it is a diplomatic triumph or even a record of great diplomatic skill no one will pretend. On one point the British commissioners made an error which at once provoked criticism. They agreed upon rules for the conduct of neutrals which are, no doubt, substantially just, but which had not been fully recognized by existing international law, or admitted by the British government during the war. Our commissioners thought it right to place on record, in the text of the treaty, that the Queen’s government could not admit these rules to be principles of international law which were in force at the time when the claims arose, but agreed that the arbitrators should assume Her Majesty’s government to have undertaken to act upon the principles set forth in these rules. Whatever opposition the treaty provoked in England was almost wholly due to this paragraph. However, the British public is not disposed to quarrel about phrases, and, as we observed when the treaty was first discussed, these principles of international law which are now solemnly established by the agreement of the two first maritime powers of the world are eminently favorable to England. When we think of the unsettled state of Europe and the passions which are raging under the pacified exterior of the Continent, when we find that nation after nation is being armed in mass, we cannot be sure that any rectitude of purpose or moderation of policy will preserve us from war. Should such a calamity fall upon us it will be an inestimable advantage that the duties of neutrals have been interpreted in the strictest sense by the nation which has the greatest opportunity of injuring us, and which has hitherto throughout its history prided itself on its independence of action and its disregard of conventionalities.

This point, on which, no doubt it is permissible to criticise the treaty, was put by Sir Charles Adderley yesterday with a certain force. He said that the Americans had rejected the former treaty because the terms of the reference to arbitration then were “whether England had fulfilled her obligations at the time the Alabama sailed;” that is, whether she had acted according to the code then accepted among nations. At present, America accepted arbitration because the terms of the reference were changed. The reference now is whether England in 1861 had fulfilled her obligations in new and stricter terms drawn up in 1871. “The question,” says Sir Charles Adderley, “is whether in a matter of mutual obligation new rules should be adopted different from those on which the obligation rested.” For the reasons we have given we think that this concession ought not to condemn the treaty. The manner in which the negotiation was extended from the fisheries to the Alabama question was certainly singular, inasmuch as it made the greater matter subsidiary to the less, and gave a place among the commissioners on a concern of imperial interest to the Canadians, who had originally been chosen for their knowledge of a merely local question. But when the offer came from the American Government to resume negotiations on the Alabama claims, it would have been the greatest of blunders to refuse on a point of form. We could not ourselves propose a new negotiation after Mr. Sumner and the Senate had so unceremoniously rejected a treaty the details of which had been mainly suggested by their own Government. But when the offer came from their side, and the Queen’s ministers had the opportunity of bringing to a close the Alabama dispute and all the other outstanding disputes between the two countries, it would have been inexcusable to say that Canadian questions must stand alone. As a matter of fact, the Canadian commissioners were very able men, and rendered good service even beyond their own domain.

Sir Charles Adderley is an authority on colonial subjects, and it may be presumptuous to follow him into their intricacies, but he fails to convince us that the interests of the dominion suffered in the hands of the commissioners. With regard to the Fenian depredations, we have no wish to deny that compensation for them is morally due, and as much is admitted by Mr. Gladstone himself; but the American commissioners, from the first, declared they had no power to enter on the question. Our government was no doubt aware that, considering the state of parties in the Union and the strength of the Irish faction, the President could not venture to sanction such a concession, and the alternative was to waive the point or to break off the negotiations. Sir Stafford Northcote maintains that the Canadians had no reason to complain of the treaty, and [Page 473] we are disposed to agree with him. The reciprocity treaty has not been re-established, but it must be remembered that the financial system of the United States is at this moment unsettled. The battle for protection has yet to be fought, but the champions of free trade are marshalling their forces and preparing for the attack. A reciprocity treaty on the old terms may be useless after a few years when the larger reciprocity of unrestricted commerce with all the world may become a principle of American finance. On Canadian as well as other subjects, a spirit of mutual concession was exhibited in the meetings at Washington, and we have the testimony of Sir Stafford Northcote that the British commissioners maintained the points which they thought of real importance. A notable proof of this is the absence from the treaty of all reference to the Queen’s proclamation of neutrality, which the American Government had declared to be a wrongful recognition of the confederates as belligerents, involving England in indefinite liabilities for everything that afterward occurred.

The debate had the happy effect of drawing from Sir Roundell Palmer a speech of great ability on the conduct of England as a state during the American war. The British government has been so well and so successfully defended, and its honor and uprightness have been at length so fully admitted by the Americans themselves, that further argument may seem unnecessary. But for an effective summary of the chief points of our case, Sir Roundell Palmer’s speech is invaluable. Not only did England do her own duty as a neutral, but by her example she prevented others from acting on opinions unfavorable to the then struggling federals. A part of his speech not less interesting is that in which he compares the arrangements made by Lord Stanley and Mr. Reverdy Johnson with the stipulations of the present treaty. According to Sir Roundell Palmer, Lord Stanley submitted to arbitration the honor and good faith of this country, an error so great that it would have been better to leave the dispute altogether unsettled. “All matters were left entirely at large; there was no question, from the proclamation downward, which was not involved in that reference, and, whatever award might have been made, either party would have been at liberty to place its own construction upon it.” The present treaty, at any rate, allows the arbitrator to take away only our money, and not our good name. Mr. Gladstone defended the government against the not very serious attacks of the enemy, and Sir Charles Abderley withdrew his motion. It had been for the production of papers; but Sir Stafford Northcote justly observed the correspondence of the commissioners with the home government was confidential, and freedom in the conduct of negotiations is only possible among those who know that their communications with one another will be considered private. So the motion was withdrawn, and we trust no further fault will be found with the treaty of Washington.

[The Standard, Monday, August 7, 1871.]

It is not difficult to understand the readiness of a government never famed for parliamentary courtesy—and which has not scrupled during the present session to postpone week after week and month after month discussions likely to be “inconvenient” to Mr. Gladstone’s interests, if not to the public service—to make or find time for the consideration of Sir C. Adderley’s motion on the Washington treaty. The debate in the upper house had somewhat damaged the ministry; that in the Commons has been altogether favorable to them. In the first place, it has been postponed to a period of the session at which the attendance is scanty, and at which party spirit, however hot, is chilled by the fear of prolonging weary and useless sittings; and the time elapsed since the conclusion of the treaty has calmed the irritation felt by no small number of impartial Englishmen at its terms, and allowed the public to grow indifferent. In the next place, the presence of Sir S. Northcote as a member of the commission made anything like a party attack impossible, and secured the government against such a damaging comment from the leader of opposition as they would otherwise have apprehended. Again, the line taken by Sir C. Adderley was peculiarly advantageous to ministers. He approves that portion of the treaty upon which his authority and experience, as late under secretary for the colonies, would have given especial weight to his censure; and he so framed his motion as to make its withdrawal, on the appeal of Sir S. Northcote, a foregone conclusion. The house of commons will never insist on the production of confidential papers. Further, the judgment of the neutrals in the House of Lords was against the government; the only eminent man who holds a somewhat similar position in the Commons—Sir R. Palmer—delivered the best speech of the debate of Friday afternoon in favor of the treaty. Altogether, therefore, the ministry have gained by the discussion, and, as we think, undeservedly; for though we have always deprecated any condemnation of the treaty in Parliament, as likely to deprive us of the principal benefit for which we have made such large sacrifices and concessions, we cannot but think that the price we have paid for reconciliation with America was higher than it would have been if a manlier premier than Mr. Gladstone and a stronger minister for foreign affairs than Lord Granville had had the conduct of English policy.

Sir C. Adderley, as we have said, approves the settlement of the fisheries question as [Page 474] highly advantageous to the Canadians. His argument rests upon the ground that the fisheries must necessarily he thrown open to the Americans, whereas our right and power to exclude them in toto are indubitable, and that the attempt to obtain the renewal of the reciprocity treaty in exchange was a double mistake: first, because it tended to make Americans fancy that we had something to gain by free trade at their expense; second, because free trade must soon be established by their own free will, without any price on our part; and it would be a pity to give up the fisheries except for a real equivalent. The only weak point of this latter argument appears to us to lie in the doubt whether Canada will get a real equivalent. The Americans deny pro forma that the colonial fisheries are worth more than their own; and, though the fact that they persist in haunting the colonial waters proves the contrary, we have some doubts as to the result of the commission which is to weigh the comparative value of the fisheries reciprocally thrown open, and order compensation accordingly. But the point of chief interest to every one, except, perhaps, the people of the maritime provinces of the dominion, is the Alabama arbitration. Sir C. Adderley put the objection to this part of the treaty with great force and clearness. “America,” he says, “rejected a former offer of arbitration, because it left our conduct to be tried by the standard of international law in force at the time, upon which she knew we must be acquitted; she accepts arbitration now, because the treaty enacts that our conduct shall be judged by a new standard of international law devised for the first time in 1871.” This is quite true. But we think that both Sir C. Adderley himself and all who followed him in the debate missed the real answer to it. America never would or could consent to an arbitration based on the international law of 1861, because really, though not, perhaps, nominally, her contention has all along been that that law had, under the changed circumstances of the age, become unjust and inadequate; a mere screen for violations of its substantial and primary principle, that neutral harbors and lands shall not be made the base of hostile operations. And as we have from the first practically admitted that on this point the Americans are right, that the rule was defective and must be amended, it does not seem altogether inconsistent on our part to allow ourselves to be judged by that which we admit ought to have been the law. Of course it would have been better had America renounced a claim for damages founded on such a concession. Had she said “by the law as it was my claim for actual redress must, of course, be limited; but you owe me moral reparation if, by the judgment of as impartial tribunal, you failed to act up to the law by which, as you allow, the conduct of nations ought to be regulated.” But as she, confused by the manner in which her diplomatists have mixed up remonstrances based on their theory of our national duty, with appeals to our municipal law, has thought fit to embody her demand for reparation in the form of a suit for damages, it hardly becomes us to refuse the particular form of amends she has requred. Again, it must be remembered that England did even at the time admit that the standard of public law now laid down was that to which we meant to conform. We did exert ourselves to the utmost to prevent vessels, unarmed, but supposed to be intended for war, from leaving our shores. What we agree to, then, is only to adopt as the standard of our liability what we made, in fact, the standard of our conduct. Sir R. Palmer showed, with all his usual eloquence and clearness, how much we did to enforce the rules of law by which we are to be judged. He shows that we stopped several vessels, under circumstances precisely similar to those of the Alabama; and that, save the Alabama, no vessel of whose intentions the American envoy had any suspicion escaped from our shores to break the law of nations as now interpreted; for the Florida entered a confederate port as a merchantmen, and received her commission there before she sailed as a confederate man-of-war. Therefore, our case is this; that, according to the old code, we did more for the North than we ought to have done; that, according to the new code, we failed, by a few hours, to stop the first vessel that ever attempted this peculiar evasion of international right, but that we did stop every one of her successors of whose intention we had any sort of notice. Is it possible, then, for a candid arbitrator to pronounce that we did not show “due diligence”? If sentence be given against us, it must be on account solely of the subsequent admission of the Alabama to our colonial ports. And it is here that the real objection to the concession made by the commissioners appears to us to lie. As the law of nations then stood we could not refuse admission to our ports to a commissioned confederate vessel, and if we are condemned under the new rules for not refusing, we shall suffer wrong—wrong to which we shall have made ourselves voluntarily liable. Nevertheless, as Sir R. Palmer remarks, by consenting to be tried by a new standard of law, we gain this advantage, that a judgment given against us does not impugn our honor or our fidelity to our actual obligations, while in any event it is better that the judgment of the arbitrators should be pronounced on definite grounds, and should not, as under the Johnson-Clarendon convention, be open to various interpretations at the humor of the disputant parties or of others who might refer to it as a precedent. Had we been acquitted by the arbiters under that convention, America might, and would, in all probability, have interpreted the acquittal [Page 475] as the legislation of such cruises as that of the Alabama; whereas now, be the verdict what it may, the law of nations is settled for the future, and settled in a sense favorable to English interests.

The exclusion from the treaty of the claims of Canada for reparation on account of the Fenian raids was condemned or regretted by every single speaker, including the prime minister himself. But we need not waste words upon it now. We are told that the Americans desire us to treat them as a grown-up nation and not as spoilt children. If so, they cannot but regret the conduct of their Government oh this point. For, in the first place, it puts them flagrantly in the wrong before the whole civilized world; in the next, it is a point which England certainty would not have conceded to any other power, and which no other power would have asked; and finally, the grounds on which this claim was excluded from the arbitration are of a kind on which no true and honest American can reflect with satisfaction. General Grant refused to do us the very same common and simple justice that we were at the same moment doing to America, because the Irish immigrants were so powerful that no American party dared offend them. If Americans can endure to plead such an excuse we need not hesitate to accept it.

One word in conclusion. The debate in general was conducted with great dignity and good feeling; and in dealing with the reparation to be made for the deeds of the Alabama, liberals as well as conservatives remembered the precedents, English and American, for the part taken by her builders, the state of English feeling, the dubious condition of the law, the fact that Mr. Laird had been advised that he was within it, and above all, the obligation imposed upon him by the present policy of the country not to vindicate her conduct by arguments which must give bitter offense to Americans. There was but one exception to this rule. Mr. Rathbone, if not misreported, took occasion to make a severe and very ungenerous attack on a man who, for the reason above given, could not answer him. Mr. Rathbone is no hot-headed youth, no ignorant demagogue; he must have been perfectly aware that it behooved Mr. Laird to be silent; he must have been well aware that at least one of the ministers who listened to him from the treasury bench has been guilty of acts quite as questionable as the building of the Alabama, with which Mr. Rathbone’s friends, if not himself, warmly sympathized; and he had no right to indulge his party feelings, as a liberal and a Northern sympathizer, at the expense of a foe whose hands were tied. We say his party feelings—for had he been actuated, as he doubtless believed, simply by a sense of public duty, he would have included sundry political friends of his own in his censures. We are bound to say that his attack was as unjust in substance as it was ungenerous in occasion, but even had Mr. Laird been as much to blame as Mr. Rathbone thinks, and had his offense been without the abundant precedents which excuse it, such language, at such a time, would have been wholly unjustifiable.

[From the Morning Post, Monday, August 7, 1871—Extract.]

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Although hours are of value at this period of the session, it cannot be said that the greater portion of Friday afternoon and evening was misapplied in the discussion of the treaty of Washington. It is true, that treaty is now a thing of the past, and that even the adverse opinion of the House of Commons would not prevent the arrangement which we have made with the United States being religiously fulfilled; but at the same time it would scarcely have been decorous that a treaty establishing no inconsiderable change in international law, and entailing no small sacrifice on the part of this country, should have been concluded without eliciting some expression of opinion from the lower house of Parliament. Within a short time after the return to this country of the royal commissioners charged with the negotiation of the treaty, its subject-matter was discussed in the upper house, and by a decisive vote that chamber declared its approval of the manner in which our long-standing difference with the United States was put in train of being finally and satisfactorily arranged. It was then pointed out, as indeed was manifest to all who were acquainted with the history of the “Alabama claims,” that the government of this country had considerably modified the attitude they held, and the language they employed, when Mr. Adams, the American minister at the Court of St. James, first demanded, on the part of the Government of Mr. Lincoln, satisfaction for the depredations committed by the Alabama and her sister cruisers. Sir Roundell Palmer was the chief law adviser of the Crown when the claims were first advanced, and in the recent debate in the House of Commons, he has no doubt reconciled much that was apparently inconsistent in our former treatment of this question, and has placed on its true footing the settlement finally assented to. It is unquestionable that the attitude assumed by the government of Lord Palmerston, when Earl Russell was at the Foreign Office, was one for which we had precedents in the conduct of the United States when pressed under precisely similar circumstances by Spain, and subsequently by Portugal, for compensation for depredations committed [Page 476] on the shipping of those powers, by privateers which issued from American ports. It is also true that the construction put by the English government on the then foreign enlistment act, was identical with that put by American judges and jurists on the act of Congress on which our statute was modeled. But, as Sir Roundell Palmer observed, “the real truth of the matter is, that this country does not like to be at variance with the United States. Whatever might be the measure of our obligations, whatever the legal view of it, this country most deeply regretted what had occurred, and we preferred to waive a strict examination of the question on legal and international grounds, in order to get a settlement which should bring security for the present and peace and good will for the future.”

Expediency, as distinguished from strict justice, was taken for a guide by the government of which Lord Stanley was the foreign minister; and although, when the Severely Johnson treaty was rejected by the United States Government, we might have fallen back on our strict rights, the liberal administration, which succeeded to office in this country, rightly followed in the footsteps of their predecessors, and addressed themselves to the task of settlement with the exclusive object of healing a serious difference and laying down rules to prevent its recurrence.

And it must be allowed that, as a set-off against the unquestionable sacrifice which we make by the treaty of Washington, we secure the inestimable gain of establishing—certainly between ourselves and the United States, and most probably universally, by the early adoption by other maritime powers—rules of international law whose observance will go far to diminish the not unfrequent risks of misunderstandings between neutrals and belligerents. The essential fault of the treaty which it had been the intention of Lord Stanley and Mr. Reverdy Johnson to conclude was that it simply provided for the settlement of the particular claims then advanced by the Government of the United States, without making any provision for the avoidance of similar misunderstandings in future; and those who entertain the opinion that the former treaty would have been preferable to that made at Washington will find some difficulty in replying to the objections taken to it by Sir Roundell Palmer. If the decision of the arbitrators had been in our favor, the ill-feeling which had arisen in the United States would have remained unabated, and, in the event of our being engaged in war with a European power, the United States, accepting the construction put upon our acts, would not improbably have encouraged in their ports similar evasions of the principle of the foreign enlistment act to those of which they had fruitlessly complained. On the other hand, if the decision of the arbitrators had been against us, the United States might still have maintained their original construction of their obligations under the act of Congress, and treated any complaints advanced by us at a future time as they had treated those made on former occasions by the Spanish and Portuguese governments. In other words, the issue has now been dealt with, on a broad, comprehensive basis, and with a view not merely to the satisfaction of an existing difference, but the protection of our future interests. The only consideration which could exist for a departure from the line taken by Earl Russell eight years ago in the dispatch in which, on the part of Her Majesty’s government, he refused to entertain the claims advanced by the American Government must rest on the creation of some guarantee that for the future the Government of the United States will undertake the same obligations they seek to cast upon us, and this guarantee is afforded by the treaty of Washington.

The main difficulty which has always stood in the way of reconciling desirable changes in international law with the municipal law of particular states, has, in the present instance, been to a great extent overcome.

Although the sovereign may by treaty agree with the executive of another state that, as between the two powers, certain rules of international law shall obtain, still that agreement must be entirely subsidiary to the municipal law. In this country the Crown, lords, and commons constitute the legislative power, and it would therefore be incompetent for the sovereign to impose on the country international obligations at variance or inconsistent with the known laws of the realm; and if she affected to do so by treaty, they would be inoperative. In like manner, in the United States the legislative power rests with the President and Congress, and consequently the President and Senate, with whom the power of making treaties resides, could not override the general law by stipulations inconsistent with it.

Now, in our case, we, in the first instance, completely remodeled our foreign enlistment act, and then the government assented by the treaty of Washington to certain rules which, by the aid of the new statute, may be enforced by the tribunals of this country; but up to this time no change has been made by Congress in the American foreign enlistment act, and it is undoubtedly true that, if no change were made, the obligations entered into by the Executive of the United States by the recent treaty would be inoperative. In the event of our being at war, and cruisers being obtained by our enemies from American ports, under circumstances similar to those under which the Alabama quitted English waters, the American Government would be powerless to put a stop to the practice. Accordingly it will be necessary for Congress to pass an [Page 477] act similar to our own, in order to enable the Executive to observe in good faith the stipulations into which it has entered.

That such an act will be speedily passed we have a right to expect, and indeed we entertain no doubt that Congress will fulfill the engagement which has been impliedly contracted in its name; but until this course is taken, that security which we look for at the hands of the Americans will not be afforded, nor will the price of the sacrifice we have made be duly paid.

[From the Daily Telegraph, Monday, August 7, 1871.]

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Those among our countrymen who are well acquainted with the United States are sometimes lost in wonder that Englishmen of cultivation and thoughtfulness should betray such ignorance and indifference, regarding all topics which affect our relations with the great republic, as we had to note in the debate of Friday last, on the Washington treaty. The “long session” of 1871 is already identified in the minds of English politicians with the abolition of purchase in the army, the introduction of vote by ballot, or the state visit to Ireland of the Prince of Wales and his brother and sister. If an intelligent man who has never left the shores of England were asked to name the public measures by which Mr. Gladstone is most likely to gain immortality, he would probably instance the disestablishment of the Irish church, the abolition of army purchase, or some other act of purely domestic legislation. None, however, who have studied history with advantage, can fail to be well aware that the measures which have most deeply affected the commonwealth of England have not unfrequently passed through Parliament without notice or comment. The biographer of that strange and brilliant being, Charles Townshend, tells us that never was there so languid a debate on so vital a topic as when, in 1765, George Grenville made the famous proposal to tax North America, by introducing to Parliament his fatal stamp act. No other debate of the last century is read to-day With such mournful interest as that in which Charles Townhend spoke of the Americans as “children planted by our care and nourished by our indulgence;” provoking from Colonel Barré the angry retort that they were “children planted not by your care, but by your oppression—they fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated land.” The politicians of all countries are too ready to imagine that everything which is close to their eyes, and is long and loudly debated, must necessarily be of gigantic magnitude. They resemble children who, gazing upward at night, find it impossible to believe that the moon is not the largest of all the heavenly bodies. But the man who extends his range of vision, and contrasts the position of Great Britain—reconciled, as she now is, to her transatlantic children—with the position in which she stood only six short months ago, will not be disposed to damn with faint praise the treaty of Washington, or to regard it as a measure of which everybody is glad and nobody proud. “That it is a diplomatic triumph,” testily observes one of our contemporaries, “no one will pretend.” Yet no treaty to which England has ever been a party, in her thousand years of history, was fraught with more advantages to mankind than the treaty of Washington. We do not claim, on behalf of Lord Ripon and his colleagues, that they out-finessed or out-maneuvered their American collaborateurs. In 1871, happily, a “diplomatic triumph” means a very different thing from what the words implied when mendacious tricksters like Talleyrand or Pozzo di Borgo tried conclusions across a board of green cloth. But we emphatically assert that, long and distinguished as we hope the public career of Lord Ripon and Sir Stafford Northcote will be, no prouder words will be inscribed in their memorial than, “One of the framers of the treaty of Washington.”

In order rightly to estimate the significance of that great instrument of reconciliation, let us briefly call to mind what were the probabilities of success before the high commissioners of Great Britain, when they landed at New York in the beginning of last March. We must not forget the annual message which the President of the United States communicated to Congress in December last. Although it excited little public attention at a moment when Paris was beleagured by the Prussians, that document was undoubtedly one of the most pronounced state papers that ever issued from the head of a great nation. President Grant animadverted, in very outspoken terms, upon the “unneighborly and unfriendly” conduct of Canada in regard to the fishery dispute, and proceeded to speak, with an acerbity scarcely dignified, of the still unadjusted Alabama claims. “The time is probably not far distant,” he continued, “when the European political connection with this continent will cease;” and he advised that the policy of the United States should be so shaped as to accord with that coveted end. Six months ago it was the scarcely concealed hope of every ordinary American politician that England would, in transatlantic phrase, “foot the balance” of the Alabama claims by withdrawing her flag from the North American continent. It was useless for Englishmen to affirm that they claim no feudal ownership over a reluctant province, but that the Union with the British Crown is maintained by the Canadians, the Nova Scotians, New Brunswickers, and British Columbians themselves. Despite the [Page 478] ignorance which on both sides of the Atlantic prevailed as to the subjects in dispute and also despite the minatory language employed in December by President Grant there were two men—Sir Edward Thornton and Mr. Secretary Fish—who deemed the moment propitious for an attempt at reconciliation. It would be unjust to deny that not a few Englishmen, well acquainted with the American sentiment, did not share the hopes of the British minister at Washington. In like manner most of the Washington politicians sneered at Mr. Fish for having brought the five British high commissioners across the Atlantic to no purpose. Mr. Sumner, for example, made no concealment of his conviction, during the whole of March and the first half of April, that the negotiations of the joint high com mission would “resemble one of those rivers in Africa which have no mouth, but which, flowing away from the sea, are lost among infinite deserts of sand.” It would be absurd, therefore, to ignore the fact that Sir Edward Thornton ran some risk, when he invited the home government to send British commissioners to Washington, and that Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville ran a still greater risk when they lent a favorable ear to Sir Edward Thornton’s invitation. The characteristic courage in which Mr. Gladstone so far emulates his great master, Sir Robert Peel, was never more markedly displayed; nor has it failed to reap a rich reward. And although the treaty thus owes its origin to Sir Edward Thornton and to a Canadian statesman now resident in London—Sir John Rose—while Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville deserve high praise for their courage in adopting the views of their transatlantic advisers, only the ignorant or the most prejudiced would assert that the treaty itself is “no diplomatic triumph.” The somewhat lengthened sojourn in Washington of four Englishmen so conciliatory, so intelligent, and honest as Lord Ripon, Sir Stafford Northcote, Professor Bernard, and Lord Tenterden, smoothed away every difficulty; and the happy result was a treaty which will write its name deeper on the page, of international history than that of Utrecht or of Vienna.

For these reasons, the short debate in the House of Commons on Friday will not improbably be read hereafter without surprise, as one of many which indicate the short-sightedness of statesmen. Out of the nine speakers who took part, three only appeared to have a just perception of the value of an international instrument which will probably convert the year 1871 into the great diplomatic date of the present century. Even Mr. Gladstone spoke as if on the defensive about a treaty which will not impossibly be the most beneficial and best-remembered measure of his life. It is desirable that Englishmen who grumble over the concessions which Lord Ripon and his colleagues made “for the sake of peace,” should remember what, in the same interest, Mr. Fish, General Schenck, and the American commissioners gave up. For the sake of a comparatively trivial payment in money, they abandoned what to three-fifths of the American nation seemed the most precious of possessions—the treasured hope of revenge. Sir Charles Adderley began the discussion with a regret that England should have sued as a petitioner in a matter which was more important to the United States. Has he reflected upon the misapprehension which these words imply? To a nation so rich and powerful as the great republic, what could it signify whether less than £3,000,000 were added or not added to a debt which at the close of the war exceeded £500,000,000? President Grant could not have more thoroughly gratified a majority of his countrymen, when, on his accession to office in 1868, the war passions were still unallayed, than by paying the losses charged to the Alabama and her sister pirates, and including the amount in the national debt, with an intimation that he or his successors would, at the right moment, hold England responsible. In such a case, the very smallest war in which England was engaged would have meant also war with the United States. It may not be generally known, that during the English expedition against King Theodore, some American politicians urged that envoys should be sent to obtain letters of marque from the Abyssinian savage. But for his inaccessibility, and for the fact that he owned no ports, the sea might have been covered with Americo-Abyssinian Alabamas. Against the recurrence of such a danger, Lord Ripon, and Sir Stafford Northcotce have guaranteed us. But those achievements are matters of detail. The grand result of the negotiations at Washington is, that English and American statesmen have joined, with the deliberate approval of the two powerful countries, in laying the basis for a system of arbitration which may hereafter save wars more gigantic and more wasteful than any we have yet witnessed; and that they have also initiated such a method of improving the relations between foreign states as may develop a genuine international law. Thus, whatever may be the opinion of cotemporaries in 1871, we believe that in 1971 the treaty of Washington will be regarded as England’s greatest diplomatic triumph during the nineteenth century.