Year: 1874

There is evidently an Alabama ''ring." Ex-


cept upon this hypothesis it seems impossible


to understand the Senate bill for the distribu-


ton of the Alabama award. BY that bill it


is proposed to shut out a class Of claimants,


and a class generally not given to suffering in
silence. 1t is proposed to exclude insurance
companies from the benefits Of the indemnity.


Now. fa bill had been brought in to give the


whole indemnity to insurance companies and
exclude everybody else, it would have been
nearer what seem the ordinary ways of legis-
lation and the operations Of large combine
tons Of capitalists. But how an interest
could have been made on behalf of many
isolated shipowners and solitary sea captains,
and even poor individual tars, to get their
shares and exclude a great money interest


that could readily combine appears rather o
puzzle as first looked at ; but the difficulty


passes away on closer observation. It seems
probable that the insurance companies, as
they could afford to wait have held on to


their claims and waited, but that all the other
claims, as necessity pressed the holders. have


been sold out, and that the keen spectators


who have bought these up have now CON-


bined to get the whole sum, and hope under


cover of popular cry against insurance ex-
tortioners to drive out of the field the un-


derwriters, whose demands. amount to nearly
. third of the whole sum- If this is the in


spiration of the case for the seizure of the


indemnity fund, the combination has secured


influential representatives in the Senate and


is, no doubt, sure Of its game in the House.


We may look, therefore, we fear, to the con-


summation, so far as relates to the two


houses, of great piece of national roguery,


which, alas is OF late altogether characteristic


1t is the theory of the bill which passed the


Senate that the money awarded at Geneva was
awarded to the United States, and is the


property of the United States to do what it


will with, so that it may, if it choose, put the
money at interest to accumulate as fund to
pay the expense Of catching future Alabamas.


But the United States, for some reason Of its
own, is disposed to pay this money out to
certain claimants who had ships destroyed by
Anglo-C Confederate cruisers or to persons who
have bought the claims of those who had ships
destroyed, unless these persons are called un-
derwriters And why not pay underwriters?
Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, has given
wonderful reason for this speaking, of course,
in support of the bill His reason is that the
depredations against our commerce were acts
OF war committed by belligerents, and there
fore legal captures, on account of which no
claim could arise against any foreign govern
ment If this argument is sound why
did we 60 to Geneva? If it is
q good argument against one set of claims it
is equally good against all the others, and so,
by the Senatorial logic, we come to the fact
that, strictly and in justice, there are no Ala
bama claims, though our clamor over them
has filed the diplomatic world for nearly ten
years. Here we have stood, pretending to be
ready for war and extorting treaties and call
ing for arbitrations and exciting ourselves and
the world generally, year in and year out, and
now at last, with the money in our hands, we
discover, or q Senator discovers for us, that
the captures of all our ships were made legiti-


mately by belligerent enemy and in such
circumstances that no just claim for indemnity
arises. How will the country relish this sort
of self-stultifcation-th argument, so like
that Of . low swindler, that we were greatly
injured before damages were allowed us and
the sudden discovery afterwards that no
damage Whatever had been donef


Was the money awarded to the nation as its |
own? At Geneva it was thought it would be
unworthy the dignity of an international tribu- |
nal and altogether mean and pitiful labor |
to enter into the examination and adjudica-
tion Of just how much had been lost, and how |
much should be paid to John Doe and Richard |
Roe in consideration of the depredations Of |
one or another of the Anglo-C Confederate
the acts of one cruiser and the Samson by |
another, and Does losses also had been many |
and various, and Doe could have kept the |
court round season with q parade of wit
nesses to prove every copper of his claim and
Roe could have done as much and, in short,
there could have been cases and counter cases
on every individual ship, as voluminous and
burdensome as were the cases and counter
cases on the main issue between the govern
ments. But the tribunal wisely deemed that
o court of such learning and political calibre,
whose members were selected by the sover-
eigns or supreme authorities of several coun-
tries, could not properly enter upon
investigations involving the legal details
Of the municipal law, but only sat
to determine the great principle of the


liability or non-liabihty Of one government
to another on admitted facts as to the acts of
certain vessels. 1t was their province to de-
termine q great principle of interest to the
future peace Of the world; not to haggle over
q claim for chronometer or sailors chest.
They were made the judges of the propriety
of their own course on this point. 1t was
contemplated that the Tribunal might pay in
aofaiI x,raru claim made nnon ifa own indc