ALABA:\rA CLAIMS. 41 



not include claims on account of the Queen's proclama- 

 tion recoo-nizins: tlie belli2:erence of the Confederates. 



Nevertheless, when, in England, the argument of 

 the American Case had been read and pondered, — 

 when it was perceived that this argument imputed to 

 Great Britain constructive comiMcity with tlie Con- 

 federates by reason of the culpable negligence of the 

 British Government to arrest the enterprises of such 

 vessels as the Alahcima, the Florida^ and the Shencin- 

 doali, — and, finally, when it was thus understood that, 

 in preferring claim for all tlie loss or injury growing- 

 out of the acts of those cruisers, whether to the Gov- 

 ernment or to private citizens, the United States did, 

 in express terms as well as in legal intendment, hold 

 the British Government responsible for prolongation 

 of our Civil War and the cost of its prosecution, — 

 when all these relations of the subject came to be un- 

 derstood, the public mind in England, and especially 

 the commercial mind, recurred at once to the event 

 which constituted at the time the dominant pre-occu- 

 pation of Europe, namely, the war indemnity of six 

 milliards so recently imposed by Germany on France. 



In view of this, a panic terror seemed to seize upon 

 London, similar to what occasionally occurs in New 

 York and other great money centres, producing a 

 state of demonstrative emotion, which, to calm ob- 

 servers outside of such centres, looks like the spas- 

 modic agitation of men who have lost their senses, 

 rather than intellisfent human action. Such, indeed, 

 is all panic terror, as exemplified by numerous his- 

 torical incidents of the contagious influence, both in 



