Year: 1872

be removed by the payment of few individual


claims for direct losses inflicted upon our citi


zens by the Anglo Confederate privateers. The


fact that the Johnson Clarendon Treaty was
nothing more than settlement of this INSULT.
cient kind caused its rejection by the Senate,
and the present treaty has the additional
demerit of having only been secured
through our humiliation and defeat.
If England had been in reality repent
ant Of her action in our rebellion;
If she had become sensible of the fact that in
her sympathy with the Southern people she
had been endeavoring to set back the civiliza-
ton and progress of the world full half GEN.
tury; if she had regretted the extra lives that
were lost and the extra suffering that was
inflicted by her unfriendly action towards the
Union cause; if she had honestly desired TO
remove the evil effects of her unfortunate
acts and to establish a better state
of feeling between the two nations, she
would have offered payment freely and
generously for the damages we had suffered
through her instrumentality, and would have
trusted to our magnanimity to limiting them
to just and equitable sum. Such a settle
ment as this would have drawn the Anglo
Saxon people closely together in the bonds of
mutual respect, and would have been the
initiation Of brotherhood between the two
great English-speaking nations Of the globe
that would have held all the world for the
next half century in bonds to keep the peace.


AS it is, the Geneva Tribunal has yet some
practical difficulties before it. At best it is
now but sort of Justices Court for the
adjustment and settlement of few outstand-
ing personal accounts amid the snarlings
and wranglings of the debtors and creditors.
1t has lost all it's national dignity and import
cares whether this or that claim is allowed or
rejected any more than he cares whether q
grocery bill or a washing account is decided
for or against his neighbor. the quib-
bles and special pleas of the English
lawyers foil to clear their government
of liability, and if the shipowners and mer-
chants who lost their property through the
acts of the cruisers get awarded certain
amounts in the shape of damages, it is not very
likely that the American people at large will
regard the result as q final and satisfactory
settlement of the debt that England owes this
country for her unfriendly conduct in our hour
Of trial. But apart from this, is there any
power that can compel the individuals who
have suffered losses to accept just such awards
as the Geneva Court may choose to
give them? Should the claimants unite
in rejecting the sums offered to them


is there any power that can prevent their un-
satisfied claims from being hereafter pressed
on the attention of England by new Presi-
dent and new Congress? Is it certain that
the Treaty Of Washington, which declares
move and adjust all complaints and claims on
the part of the United States" growing
out Of the acts of the Anglo-C Confed-
crate privateers, has not already been
violated and turned to mere waste poper2 The
business of the Geneva Tribunal may proceed
with oil its high-toned decorum and respecta-
bility; the learned lawyers on both sides may
thrust and parry in the most finished style of
legal fence the British Ministry may continue
to chuckle over their triumph the Queen of
England may complacently declare that her
promise not to suffer the American case to
be considered by the Geneva arbitrators has
been fulfilled to the letter; the highly salts
factory reports given out from the Office Of the
Secretary of State OF Washington may still be
published twice week; but behind them all
stand the American people, and it is just pos
sible that they may yet have few last words
to soy about the Treaty of Washington and
the Alabama claims before the whole story
passes into the realms of history.