The letter which follows upon the Alabama led to a prolonged correspondence with Historicus, but as the subject of that correspondence was somewhat beside the main object of the letter, it need not be given. Lord Hobart's earnest hope that the differences which threatened to divide the United States and Great Britain should be submitted to arbitration was realised, and he never ceased to use his influence with a view to that object. The two great nations, to whom the cause of freedom is sacred, agreed together to arrange their differences according to the dictates of reason and humanity. Lord Ripon was entrusted with the mission to America which achieved this really glorious result, and which also established a precedent for the future. Privately Lord Hobart was specially pleased that to his own cousin this opportunity had been given with such successful results.

"I am proud to think that I have a drop of the same blood in my veins as the man who has succeeded in advocating the cause of arbitration to settle our differences with the United States." These were his words a year or more after the event. Just before the appointment of Lord Ripon's commission, the essay upon the Alabama Claims was published.

That concession to arbitration was by no means appreciated. It greatly provoked the Philistines at the time, but the wisdom of the policy must, in the long run, prevail. The payment of our share, and our loyalty to the line we had advocated in submitting to the sentence wherever the decision was against us, has proved a very trifling concession from Great Britain compared to the advantages which she has thereby secured. In the late war between Russia and Turkey, America remained neutral, and in no way used her influence against English interests,

and this was known to be the result of the policy of arbitration.

In the present day the friendly relations between the two countries protects the policy of both in their relation to the conspiracies of Fenianism, which in itself is a worthy legacy of the barbarism of old days.

Time is teaching nations that Christianity is, in the long run, not only wise and just, but also expedient; its influence is continuous and progressive. The Jingoes' creed is reactionary, ruthless, and unsafe. Most loyally may we endorse the last words of a speech made some few years ago by Sir William Harcourt, who, in advocating a similar policy in another question of the same sort, reminded us of the well-known words about wisdom: "That all her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace."

66 LORD HOBART UPON THE ALABAMA CLAIMS.

"To the Editor of The Times.'

"SIR, A few days ago there appeared in your columns. a very short diplomatic letter, which seems almost to have escaped public observation, but which was probably of more importance, so far as the future of this country is concerned, than any similar document published in recent times. It was a despatch from Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams, dated the 29th of November last, and its effect was to break off, for the present at least, the negotiation between this country and the United States respecting the Alabama difficulty. The condition,' writes Mr. Seward,' being inadmissible, the proposed limited reference' (to arbitration) is therefore declined.'

"There can be no doubt that the failure of these negotiations means nothing less than unfriendly relations between

Great Britain and the United States; that unfriendly relations mean the risk, more or less imminent, of war; and that war between Great Britain and the United States would be a calamity as great as any which could afflict the world. But there is a consideration more immediately urgent which enhances the evil. The Government of the United States has hitherto loyally done its duty to this country in regard to the proceedings of Fenianism within their dominions, but it plainly enough intimates in this correspondence that it may now be obliged to conform its principles and policy to those which it considers to have been the principles and policy of this country during the American Civil War. Nothing else is wanting to make Fenianism, which is now only troublesome and vexatious, serious and formidable.

"It is most important that the people of this country should clearly understand the position in which they are placed in reference to this subject. When all deduction is made for faults of national character, there is in the generality of Englishmen a fund of good sense and right feeling which would, if only they were fully instructed as to that which the Government of the day was doing, or about to do, prevent, as I believe, any very great or frequent errors in our foreign policy. Three-fourths of the wars in which this country has been engaged would have been impossible if the nation could have been made fully aware of what was taking place in the drifting' period. But Blue-books are tardy of appearance, inaccessible to the general public, and unalluring to the representative mind.

"The matter, then, stands thus: The United States' Government has pressed upon the British Government a formidable list of claims on account of losses inflicted upon American citizens by the depredations of the Alabama and other vessels of her class, and has at the same time stated very clearly the grounds on which it urges the settlement of those claims. Those grounds are recapitulated by Mr. Seward in his despatch of the 27th of August, 1866,

VOL. I.

K

and are shortly as follows: That by the Queen's proclamation of 1861 belligerent rights were wrongfully conceded to certain slaveholding States then in insurrection against their lawful Government; that, in consequence of such concession, those States obtained, among other advantages, power to assume a national flag, and to seize and destroy goods and shipping of the United States; that thereupon, from the very nation which had mainly occasioned this injustice, there proceeded swift and powerful vessels of war, which became the recognised property of the insurgents, and inflicted enormous injury upon American trade and navigation; that, to prevent such vessels from leaving her shores, no serious, or, at least, no sufficient, effort was made by the Government of this country; that, moreover, such vessels were repeatedly harboured and protected in various ports of Great Britain and her colonies, and that Great Britain owes to the United States indemnity for the losses which have thus been sustained. The British Government, while refusing to admit the validity of this reasoning, offers to refer the question to arbitration; but on one condition-that in the case submitted to the arbiter no account shall be taken of the recognition of the insurgent States as belligerents by the Royal proclamation of 1861. On this condition it insists, because it considers that the question as to the legality or propriety of that recognition is of a kind upon which every State must be held to be the sole judge of its duty.' The United States, on the other hand, while assenting to arbitration, desire that the whole controversy' may be referred to arbitration as it stands; not for decision upon its merits, but in order that their demand for compensation may be laid before the arbiter, accompanied by the arguments on which it is founded.

"It comes, then, to this-that the British Government has refused, not only to yield to the demand of the United States, but to submit the case, except in a very partial and limited form, to arbitration. Is the British nation prepared to accept the responsibility? To decline to comply with the requisition of a foreign Power because you consider it

unreasonable is one thing; to refuse to adopt the only existing method, except war, of settling the dispute is quite another. And it may well be asked whether, if a question such as that of the recognition of the South as belligerent, inflicting, as it did, serious loss and injury upon a friendly State, be not a proper subject for arbitration, any great question of foreign policy can ever hereafter be decided by any other than those time-honoured but somewhat illogical authorities, bullets and cold steel.

"In the protocols appended to the Declaration of Paris in 1856 there stands recorded, on the part of the four great Powers signataries of that declaration, the unanimous expression of a hope that in future nations will, before declaring war, refer the matter in dispute to the judgment of a neutral State. It was the British Minister who proposed that momentous paragraph; it is the British Government that now, on the first opportunity for applying it, protests against its application. But Governments have short memories; and it is, perhaps, not surprising, under their guidance, to find a nation which a decade ago appeared in the character of general peace-maker and advocate of mutual concession, insisting, at the possible cost of a fratricidal war, on the most extreme and rigorous theories of national sovereignty.

"There is, however, no need to rely upon this argument. For in the present case it happens that no one proposes that any decision shall be pronounced upon the right of Great Britain to recognise the belligerency of the South. The United States do not require on the contrary, they expressly exclude from their requirements-any such arbitrement. Upon the particular question to be submitted to the arbiter, which is the question whether compensation is due to the United States for the losses inflicted by the Alabama and her coadjutors, both nations are agreed. That such an arbitration may be resorted to without prejudice to national dignity both are also agreed. But one of them demands that certain facts and inferences which the other considers material to the