The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-08

mission of the Alabama into British ports
under circumstances alleged to have turned
those ports into base of naval operations
But till the clause is explained, it may bear
more serious meaning. Is It really in
tended that the British Government shall be
held answersble in damages, because
blockade-runners carrying contraband of war
waited their opportunity at Bermuda, or in
some of the West Indian ports? A new rule
of this sort would overthrow the whole theory
of international law, and indeed it would be
difficult to apply it unless the employment of
London and Liverpool as ports from which
vast supplies of arms and ammunition we're
despatched to the Northern States we're taken
into account as q set-off against the use
to which the West Indies were put
by the runners of the Southern
blockade. This second canon is one which
demands the fullest explanation from the
Government on behalf of the negotiators
whenever the treaty is discussed by Parlia-
ment.
The general reasons for regarding the
treaty, not exactly as triumph of diplo-
matte management, but as an arrangement
reasonably fair, on the whole, of very awk-
ward difficulty, remain pretty much what
they were when its provisions we're less per-
fectly ascertained. We may suspend our
opinion on the second of the new international
rendered less useful than it might be by the
defect in precision of which we have CON-
planned; but still this last rule will probably
have some effectin future wars, and whatever
effect it has must in the long run be advan-
tageous to the power which, in the only case
to which the treaty can apply, is very much
more likely to be belligerent than neutral
The settlement of the dispute which has been
rising or falling for six or seven years is also
desired by all Englshmen, if it can be ef-
fected on honorable terms. No assertion
might be made with more confidence of all of
us than that we have not particle of settled
hostility to the Americans, and that even our
transient fits of ill-humor with them
are produced only by extreme provocation.
We must be allowed to take the Queens ex-
preston of regret for the Alabama misfor-
tune little in our own sense if we are to
preserve our self-respect while acquiescing in
it, but, that point conceded, we none of us
object to pay handsomely for the removal of
that danger of which the reality has been
questioned, but of which the nature is pretty
plainly indicated, as was recently pointed out
by an American correspondent of the Tines
in those strange and unnatural European alli-
ances for which American diplomacy has OF
late years shown SO strong hankering
Meantime, though it is quite true that the
Americans have gained considerable advan
tages in the final adjustment of the dispute
as is always the case with the party Least
anxious to compromise quarrel-they have
nevertheless, relinquished good deal of the
ground on which, to use their own phrase
they once put down their foot" The absurd
claim to be compensated for a prematur,
recognition of belligerency, or for genera
unfriendliness, has been quietly surrendered
and as yet we do not know that even Mr.
Sumner has noticed its abandonment.