ALABAMA CLAIMS. 59 



Great Britain. That was the very question present 

 ed by the Treaty. 



Great Britain professed to be so much offended by 

 the character of certain of the proofs adduced in the 

 Ainerican.Case, rigorously pertinent to the question 

 as all those proofs were, that she would not suffer 

 any appropriate answer to those proofs to be brought 

 forward in her Counter-Case or in her Argument : it 

 was not compatible with self-respect, it would be 

 giving dignity to undignified arguments, we were 

 told by the British Press. Meanwhile, the very mat 

 ter which the British Government could not conde 

 scend to notice was both material and important to 

 such a degree as very much to inflame the temper and 

 exercise the ingenuity of Sir Alexander Cockbum, 

 the &quot; representative&quot; of Great Britain at Geneva. 



Now, the American Case, if conceived in any other 

 spirit than that of just and fair exposition of the pre 

 cise issue, question, that is, whether the British Gov 

 ernment had or had not incurred responsibility for 

 its want of due diligence in the matter of Confederate 

 cruisers fitted out in the ports of Great Britain, I 

 say, if the American Government, in the preparation 

 of its Case, had not been animated by the spirit of 

 perfect fairness and justness, it might have gone into 

 the inquiry of the political conduct of Great Britain 

 in other times, and with reference to other nations, in 

 the view of imputing to her habitual disregard of the 

 law of nations in illustration of her present conduct 

 toward the United States. We might have charged 

 that, while her statesmen contend that they could do 



