98 ARGUMENTS ON PRELIMINARY MOTIONS. 



first time, produce tlieir evidence under the pretext that it is a reply to 

 ours, so that we shall have no opportunity to meet if? Can that be possi- 

 ble"? Why, no; we could not think that. Both sides were represented 

 by lawyers, and by lawyers who were bred in the same school of jurisdic- 

 tion and procedure; and both sides equally knew that in that scliool of 

 jurisdiction and jirocedure nothing was more zealously regarded, noth- 

 ing more zealously protected than ])erfect equality between the con- 

 tending parties in respect to the use of the instrumentalities which a 

 court of justice employs in order to gain a knowledge of the truth — a 

 perfect equality. 



Well, it was a very serious question for the advisers of the United 

 States to determine what should be done under the circumstances. 

 Should they go on without objection or protest, and then perchance, 

 when the Counter Case came in, find there was an immense mass of evi- 

 dence to which they would have no opportunity to reply, and go before 

 this Tribunal under those disadvantages? Why, if there had been no 

 material importance in the dispute a disadvantage of that sort was so 

 shocking to the professional sense, I may say, that we could not stand 

 under it. Wlnxt should we do? Itevoke the Arbitration? My learned 

 associate perhaps intimated in tlie conrse of his argument, that if his 

 counsels had been followed, that would have been done. It is no con- 

 sequence what our counsels were in that particular; but to revoke the 

 Arbitration, becaUvSe the Case had not been made out according to our 

 view, would be a step in which we could ill defend ourselves before the 

 civilized world, and, n^jon a cpiestion respecting an Ijiteruational Arbi- 

 tration, the opinions of the civilized world had to be taken into account. 

 We resorted to arbitration because perha^js the civilized world might 

 think that we were not justified in resorting to the dread arbitrament 

 of force in order to defend our claims to the seals. Could we go back 

 and resort to that dread arbitrament of force, because we disagreed 

 about the meaning of the terms in which written papers had been 

 framed? However easy it may have been to satisfy technic:U lawyers 

 that our oiiinion was correct, it would have been somewhat difficult to 

 satisfy the opinions of mankind that it was right to revoke the arbitra- 

 tion on that account. That course was out of the question. What else 

 could we do? Well, we could remonstrate with Tier Majesty's Govern- 

 ment and humbly request of it that it would furnish us with such 

 evidence as it designed to rely on tor the purpose of sustaining its con- 

 tentions; in other words, we could resort to entreaty, involving self 

 humiliation; and we might further insist that we would go on accord- 

 ing to our own views, and if, when the Counter Case of Creat Britain 

 came in it was found to contain matter which ought, according to our 

 views, to have gone into its original Case, we could then, when we came 

 before the Tribunal, assume that it had a jurisdiction to determine the 

 regularity and i^ropriety in which the Cases had been made up, and ask 

 it to strike out from the Counter Case of Her Majesty's Government 

 everything which in fairness ought to have gone into its original Case. 

 That we could do. 



Well, for the purpose of saving the Arbitration the United States 

 resolved upon a course of that character — a conciliatory method, and, if 

 it Avas not agreeable to all of us, I am bound to say that, so far as I am 

 concerned, 1 think it was a proper one — and they therefore, addressed 

 a diplomatic comunmication to the British Government calling its atten- 

 tion to the true interin-etation of this Treaty, to the circumstance that 

 the Case of Her Majesty's Government had been made up in violation 

 of its plain terms, and to ask that the mistake should now be remedied 



