ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 339 



ernnients of those nationals would be justified in pressing upon the 

 United States claims for compensation. The short answer will be found 

 in the statement that they were regarded as acts of belligerent hos- 

 tility, and that in the opinion of the Law Officers — 1 will read the 

 opinion of the Law Officer of the day, a man of great eminence — it fell 

 within the principle that innocent neutrals who suffer by the operation 

 of belligerent acts in time of belligerency, had no claims which their 

 Governments could press diplomatically. There were as usual in all 

 cases of legislative bodies of any kind, I may say, and certainly of a 



popular character, diverse views, and persons were to be found 

 1126 to reproach tiie Government of the day for not having been more 



thorough and more strenuous in insisting that there should be 

 compensation made. For instance, I see that Mr Eoebuck, an emiaent 

 politician of that day, makes a more or less vehement attack upon Lord 

 Palmerston because he has not done more; and Mr Disraeli, as he then 

 was, Lord Beaconsfield, as he afterwards became, rather joins in that; 

 but Lord liussell, who was at that time not in the Government of Lord 

 Palmerston (and indeed, as some of you will recollect was on anything 

 but good terms with Lord Palmerston, in 1857), supports the Govern- 

 ment. What the Attorney General says is this : — the reference to Han- 

 sard is Third Series, vol. CXLVI, page 47. 



(The Attorney-General, I ought to say, because it gives some weight 

 to his opinion, was Sir Eichard Bethel, afterwards Lord Westbury, 

 Lord Chancellor of England.) 



The Attorney General assured the hon. and learned member for Sheffield (Mr Roe- 

 buck) and tbe hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, that if the law advisers of 

 the Crown had found that, compatibly with the international law of Europe, satis- 

 faction could have been demanded from America for the losses sustained by British 

 subjects at Greytown, they would unquestionably have pressed upon the Govern- 

 ment advice to that effect. The opinion they arrived at was arrived at unwillingly 

 and reluctantly by the law advisers of the Crown. But France also was concerned 

 in this affair, and was she to be accused of truckling to America? In France they 

 were obliged to come to the same conclusion, aud France therefore as well as Eng- 

 land had abstained from pressing any demand for satisfaction that could not legally 

 be obtained. The exjierieuce of the proceedings between this country and America 

 which ho had had as law adviser of the Crown led him to a conclusion the reverse 

 of that arrived at by the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down. If America were 

 asked her opinion, she would say that she had reason to complain again and again 

 of the strictness with which the law of this country and the principles of interna- 

 tional law had been enforced against her. He defied the hon. Gentleman to point 

 to a single instance in which England had given up a legal claim to satisfaction. 

 Every jurist admitted that in a case like that of the Greytown, bombardment no 

 compensation could be enforced for the losses sustained. The principle which gov- 

 erned such cases was, that the citizens of foreign States who resided within the 

 arena of war had no right to demand compensation from either belligerents, for the 

 losses or injuries they sustained. As an instance of this doctrine he would beg the 

 hon. Gentleman to call to mind the case of Copenhagen aud the bombardment of 

 other places. 



I care not whether that was right or whether that was wrong. That 

 was the view taken by the Law Officer, that it was a case of loss within 

 the arena of war. 



Now I come to the argument from the analogy of legislation in Eng- 

 land which is relied upon by my learned friends. If I may be permitted 

 to refer the Arbitrators to a convenient reference which will save the 

 need of their constantly clianging their books of reference, I would ask 

 them to refer to the British Argument, at page 39. 



]S[ow may I make — without making it I hope in any acrimonious 

 spirit — this one comment in reference to this legislation which I am 

 about to call attention to. The facts are, with sufficient fullness and 

 correctness in each of these cases, set out in the British Counter 



