DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE AND FOREIGN RELATIONS. 



245 



British case and counter-case strenuously contended 

 that the submission was limited to the four vessels 

 first above named. The tribunal unanimously, in- 

 cluding Sir Alexander Cockburn, took no notice of 

 this claim of Great Britain, and considered all the 

 claims presented, and decided them upon their 

 merits. 



7. The Dissenting Opinion of Sir A. Cockburn. 



The frankness with which Sir Alexander Cock- 

 burn confesses, in this opinion, that he sat on the 

 tribunal, not as a judge, but as, " in some sense the 

 representative of Great Britain J' 1 one of the parties 

 to the controversy, places before the world the knowl- 

 edge of a fact of which, otherwise, it would have 

 been better to take no public notice. 



The chief-justice calls legal propositions made by 

 General Cusliing, Mr. Evarts, and Mr. Waite, over 

 their signatures and under the responsibility of coun- 

 sel, "strange misrepresentations," and "assertions 

 without the shadow of a foundation." He says that 

 "their imaginations must have been lively, while 

 their consciences slept." He finds in a portion of 

 their argument "an extraordinary series of proposi- 

 tions," and the " most singular confusion of ideas, 

 misrepresentations of facts, and ignorance both of 

 law and history, which were, perhaps, ever crowded 

 into the same space." He calls the part of their 

 argument on which he was commenting, " an affront 

 offered to this tribunal, by such an attempt to prac- 

 tise on our supposed credulity or ignorance," and 

 says that he " is at a loss to understand how counsel, 

 familiar with English law, can take upon themselves 

 to make statements of this sort." 



I need not assume in the United States to vindi- 

 cate the accuracy of statements or the soundness of 

 reasonings which have the guarantee of the names 

 of our distinguished counsel. The charges are sanc- 

 tioned by the chief-justice alone. I have no hesita- 

 tion in expressing my conviction that they would 

 have been indignantly repudiated by each and all of 

 his colleagues, nad the paper in which they are made 

 been publicly read, or had its contents been made 

 known at the time when the tribunal ordered it to 

 be recorded. This voluminous paper was, in fact, 

 not read in the tribunal ; its author presented it in 

 bulk without any statement respecting its character ; 

 no one had any reason to imagine its contents ; and 

 it was not made public until several days after the 

 dissolution of the tribunal and the separation of its 

 members. As Sir Alexander Cockburn says of the 

 charges of unfriendliness which were made in the 

 American case against members of Lord Palmer- 

 ston's Cabinet, " The world must judge between the 

 accusers and accused." 



The British arbitrator also charges that the case 

 of the United States " pours forth the pent-up venom 

 of national and personal hate." He speaks of the 

 " abuse " it " freely bestows," and complains of the 

 ' hostile and insulting tone thus offensively and un- 

 necessarily adopted toward Great Britain, her states- 

 men, and her institutions." 



These charges appear to be founded upon the 

 proof of the desire of various members of the British 

 Government for the success of the insurgents in the 

 South, taken from the mouths of the speakers and 

 presented for the consideration of the tribunal, and 

 upon the legitimate application, which was made 

 of that proof in the issue respecting " due dili- 

 gence," which was pending before the tribunal at 

 Geneva. 



A complete vindication of the line of argument in 

 the case (if any were needed) could be drawn from 

 ir Alexander Cockburn' s paper : " There can be 

 no doubt," he says, " that these speeches not only 

 expressed the sentiments of the speakers, but may- 

 be taken to be the exponent of the sentiments gen- 

 erally entertained at that time ; and he adds : 



though partiality does not necessarily lead to want 

 of diligence, yet it is apt to do so, and in case of 

 doubt would turn the scale." With such an admis- 



sion as this, it is surprising that a man of the robust 

 sense of the chief-justice should have reproduced the 

 rash imputations of the British press. 



That I charged individual members of Lord Pal- 

 merston's Cabinet with a partiality for the insur- 

 gents, is true ; equally true is it that I supported the 

 charge by proof from their own lips. 



But I never questioned their right to entertain 

 such partiality, or to express it in any manner that 

 suited them. I never even assumed to criticise its 

 justice before a tribunal created to try other issues. 

 I confined myself strictly to the issues before that 

 body, and I argued that this partiality of individual 

 members of the Government would be apt to lead to 

 want of diligence, and in case of doubt would turn 

 the scale a line of argument which is now admitted 

 to be just. 



If I argued that these acts of individual members 

 of the British Government were inconsistent with 

 the "due diligence" required by the treaty, I did 

 only what Lord Eussell had said to Mr. Adams must 

 be the inevitable result of an arbitration : " Have the 

 British Government acted with due diligence, or, in 

 other words, with good faith and honesty? " was the 

 question by which he said the liability of England 

 was to be determined. 



If I urged that, in any instance, the neutrality of 

 Great Britain was not sincere, I did but pursue the 

 line of argument which Lord Westbury had defended 

 in advance in the House of Lords, and 1 did it nearly 

 in his own language. 



I find no fault that Sir Alexander Cockburn does 

 not agree with me, and with most of the world out- 

 side of England* as to the force of the evidence 

 which was presented respecting these points. That 

 is a subject on which persons may honestly differ. 

 But I must be permitted to express some surprise 

 that a lawyer of his deservedly great reputation 

 should have made such a disagreement the cause of 

 totally unfounded allegations against the case of the 

 United States and its author. 



With the exception of these personal remarks, this 

 long dissenting opinion (twice the length of the 

 American case) adds little or nothing new to the 

 arguments, previously put forth by Great Britain in 

 vindication of her course toward^the United States. 

 There are several material errors in its statements of 

 facts, but I shall not follow its example of injustice 

 in attributing them to design. All right-thinking 

 persons will heartily echo the wish with which the 

 paper closes, "that in the time to come no sense of 

 past wrong unredressed will stand in the way of the 

 friendly and harmonious relations which should sub- 

 sist between two great and kindred nations." 



Thus, surrounded by difficulties which at onetime 

 seemed insuperable, this great cause has reached its 

 conclusion. Nations have, ere now, consented to 

 adjust by arbitration questions of figures and ques- 

 tions of boundaries ; but the world has had few, if 

 any, earlier examples of the voluntary submission to 

 arbitration of a question in which a deep-seated con- 

 viction of injuries and wrongs which no possible 

 award could compensate, animated a whole nation. It 

 is out of such sentiments and feelings that wars come. 

 The United States elected the path of peace. Con- 

 fident of receiving justice, they laid the story of their 

 wrongs before an impartial tribunal. This story, so 

 grievous in its simple truthfulness, threatened for a 

 time to break up the peaceful settlement which the 

 parties had promised each other to make. Notwith- 

 standing all obstacles, however, the great experi- 

 ment has been carried to a successful end; and here- 

 after it cannot be denied that questions involving 

 national sentiment may be decided by arbitration, 

 as well as questions of figures. 



The commander who had been permitted, by 

 Providence, to guide some of the greatest military 

 events in history, has thus, in civil life, assisted in 

 presenting to the nations of the world the most con- 

 1 of the settlement of international 



spicuous example 

 disputes by peace 



ceful arbitration. 



