The Sun.
London, England, 1870-05-02 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, MAY 2, 1870.

THE t, SATURDAY REVIEW" AND THE

tends that this course was right, being in accordance
with international law, and America thus replies—
" Well, let it be so ; let it clearly be understood that
in time of war, insurgents, or any power at war
which we choose to recognize as a belligerent, shall
be entitled to purchasP and commission ships from
our ports to cruise against the enemy's commerce,
to take prizes and burn them on the high seas, and to
receive while doing so aid and comfort in our ports,"
When thus put, there are Englishmen who possess the
intelligence to perceive that in this the most deadly
precedent would be established against Great Bri-
tain, while the calculation of such brings them to the
conclusion that England having placed herself in
false position, it would be advisable to make a very
considerable sacrifice to get out of it if possible.
This dread, not to speak of the na, ional sense of jus-
tice more or less implanted in all, makes them
anxious to have the question settled by arbitration,
that the award should be against themselves, so that
the precedent might be abolished and the law esta-
blished in the International Code, that the nation
shall be responsible for the damage accruing, from
the acts of a ship which has left its ports on the
same errand and in the same way as the Alabama.
The Saturday may rely on the fact that England
no more than any child can eat its pudding and
have it; it has eaten its pudding in the Alabama
case, and it cannot have the precedent, which so
fearfully weakens its power and darkens its future,
abolished, except by first making reparation. This
is the true question to meet, instead of abusing Mr
SEWARD, Secretary Fistt, Congress, the press, and
the nation generally; and wherever it is omitted in
a discussion of the Alabama claims, the core of the
a tbject has gone too.—Anglo-American 2 imes.

ALABAMA CLAIMS.

The Saturday Review of last week contained one
of its characteristic articles on the United States in
general and the Alabama Claims question in parti-
cular. Anticipating the revival of the discussion
it awards praise to a Professor of International Law
who has brought the subject into a comprehensive
form, and placed on record in an intelligible light Eng-
land's relations to America as a whole during the
Civil War. '1 he Saturday a ►ys Englishmen forget
the incidents, and allow themselves to be deluded
into the belief through American clamour, that they
had really acted unjustly, clearly infringing inter-
national law, whereas the Review asserts they were
all along as nearly right as a nation placed in such
circumstances well could be. The Professor of in-
ternational law narrows the only wrong of which
there could be a question, to the fitting out of the
Alabama, and that, to the admission by the Govern-
ment that it was a wrong, inasmuch as orders had
been despatched to Liverpool, though too late, for
the detention of the vessel. Had the orders ar-
rived in time, and No. 290 been detained, the Gos
vt rnmen twould have infringed the law, and through
the escape of the steamer, it escaped a successful
prosecution. This, as far as we understand the
drift of the article, is its meaning; but it is so over-
loaded with spite, and the hatred always so con-
spicuous in the Saturday towards everything ap-
pertaining to the great Republic, that its meaning
is not so clear as it otherwise might have been. It is
remarkable that the papers most deeply imbued with
malevolence to the Union invariably preface their
misrepresent►tions and vicious remarks with allu-
sions to the hatred entertained in America against
England. That is their stock argument, and they
have found it to answer by long experience, for
theyhave practised it from the infancy of the Repub-
lic till now. They write for men who know little or
nothing of the country, and therefore they can pub-
lish with impunity the most erroneous statements.
But, fortunately for those who earnestly desire to
keep alive a spirit of hatred between the nations, the
Republic furnishes a plausible argument The rulers
of a commonwealth whose Government is founded
on universal suffrage and frequently recurring elec-
tions must adapt their way of doing the same things
as a despotic empire doe,, to the public taste. The
people are sovereign, and the people's dignity and
prejudice have as much right to be consulted as the
despot's dignity and prejudice. What we have to
look to closely is the justice of the thing done, and, in
a very secondary degree, towards the mode of doing
it. Now, in glancing through the articles of such
organs as the Saturday Review and the Standard, the
charge brought against the United States does not ap-
pear to be the injustice of the policy adopted, but the
arrogance of the manner ; the insolence, and dicta
torial assumption of the despatches; the tone of
the resolutions offered in Congress, and the de-
bates thereon, diplomatic communications, and the
extravagance of the newspaper press—these furnish
the foundation for the bitter attacks constantly ap-
pearing in a certain section of the English press.
While the most grandiloquent assumptions of a
sovereign in conducting a negotiation are passed
unnoticed, the Saturday would deny to the citizens
of the Republic, who consider themselvesthe greatest
of all sovereigns, the privilege of having their ne-
gotiations conducted according to their taste. We
grant that the taste is bad; that it would better be-
cometh at mighty potentate, the American People, to
be more conciliating, and less dictatorial, to drop all
indulgence in Congressional buncombe; still we con-
tend that the nation must be judged by its acts, not
by its talk, and that American acts, on the whole,
a-e in a high degree equitable, and scrupulously
dictated by the requirements of international law.
Admitting, as we have, that less assumption in the
Foreign Ministers of so great a country would com-
mand more respect abroad for that country, we main-
tain that Americans, as they grow in strength and
feel their power, are becoming less and less assuming,
losing more and more that tone their enemies use
so effectually to create a bad spirit against them on
this side the Atlantic. But both the Saturday Re-
view and numerous otherpapersof its class are aware,
when they quote Mr. SEWARD'S despatches, as also
the resolutions in the House of Representatives, the
stump speeches of orators, the railings of the press,
that these do not represent any genuine hatred of
England ; that Americans individually prefer Eng-
land to any other nation, and in the aggregate have
a respect, and even veneration, for the Old Coun-
try ; therefore they know that they are misrepre-
senting the true sentiment of the Republic with the
object of keeping alive that lessening feeling of gen-
uine dread and dislike which once had so deep a hold
on a certain section of the English people. Such arti-
cles as appear in the Saturday Review, the Standard,
and others, have the real smack of hatred; not the
mere mercenary writing to " order," which the Bri-
tannia critic asserts to be the produ3t of these jour-
nals, butthe genuine feelings of the men who produce
them; and they are accepted in America as express-
ing the opinion of the ruling and influential classes
of Great Britain. The few Americans who read
the Saturday are, for the most part, influential men
in their own country, and the bolt is truly shot, for
unless the individual be unusually well informed he
feels the depth of the hatred expressed, and believes
that there can be nothing but war to the knife be-
tween that class and his native country, which, he
thinks, means war with England so long as it is ruled
by that class. We happen to know, that, in spite of the
pernicious efforts of such papers, the sentiments of
the upper classes in England are rapidly undergoing
a change. Finding that they cannot successfully
combat the American Democracy, they feel inclined
to turn round and court it. It is an evil, like the
east wind, which cannot be shut out, but can as
wisdom dictates be modified, and its injurious influ-
ences mitigated. That is the best attitude towards
the Republic for high Toryism, and presently, if it
be judiciously maintained, a class aping English
aristocracy may be formed in the great cities of
America, where wealth is accumulating in indivi-
dual hands in sufficient amount to enable its pos-
sessors to act en grand seigneur. But it appears to
be the object of the Saturday review that hatred
should be the ruling international feeling. We
know of no paper published in America, except
perhaps some Fenian organs, which displays any-
thing like the malevolence towards England tnat
the Saturday Review does towards the United
States, nor do we ever see in any American paper
such sytematic misrepresentation and calumny
That these articles themselves produce bitter re-
torts we admit, and also that many untrue things
of England are then said. Nor is it surprising, in
view of the Saturday's manner of discussing the
A lubania claims, that many American papers should
treat them solely. from the American stand-point,
and, both being irreconcilable, the dispute unless
more reasonable persons are entrusted with the ne-
gotiations must necessarily be endless or end in war.
The Alabama case is very simple when cleared from
all the international law arguments, despatches, &c.,
which hang around it like cobwebs, obscuring the
real colour of the transactions. A war vessel was
built in England by Englishmen, and partially
fit.ted expressly to cruise against American com-
merce. This was done in open daylight without
the slightest disguise, and the vessel left England
on her mission, receiving her full armament, crew,
and commission under the shelter of a desert island.
Without having ever been in any except a British
port she captured and burnt American vessels on
the high seas wherever she could find them, and
pursued her desolating career from ocean to ocean,
to the great injury of American comtnerce, while
meeting everywhere the warmest welcome in the
British_ colonies she visited. The Saturday con-