ALABAMA CLAIMS. ' 17 



consciousness of injury, manifested greater magnanim- 

 ity than was displayed in that emergency by the 

 United States. 



We had on the sea hundreds of ships of war or of 

 transport ; we had on land hundreds of thousands of 

 veteran soldiers under arms ; we had officers of land 

 and sea, the combatants in a hundred battles : all this 

 vast force of war was in a condition to be launched 

 as a thunderbolt at any enemy ; and, in the present 

 case, the possessions of that enemy, whether conti- 

 nental or insular, lay at our very door in tempting 

 helplessness. 



But neither the Government and people of the 

 United States, nay, nor their laurel-crowned Gener- 

 als and Admirals, desired war as a choice,. nor would, 

 accept it but as a necessity ; and they elected to con- 

 tinue to neijotiate with Great Britain, and to do what 

 no great European State has ever done under like cir- 

 cumstances, — that is, to disarm absolutely, and make 

 thorough trial of the experiment of generous forbear- 

 ance before having recourse to the dread extremity 

 of vengeful hostilities against Great Britain. 



NEGOTIATIONS BY ME. SEWARD. 



The event justified our conduct. To the prejudiced 

 and impracticable Lord Eussell, there succeeded in 

 charo-e of the foreiojn affairs of the British Govern- 

 ment, first. Lord Stanley [now the Earl of Derby], 

 and then the Earl of Clarendon, who, more wise and 

 just than he, successively entered upon negotiations 

 with the United States on that very basis of arbitra- 



B 



