ALABAMA CLAIMS. 59 



Great Britain. That was the very question present- 

 ed by tlie Treaty. 



Great Britain professed to be so mucli offended by 

 the character of certain of the proofs adduced in the 

 American Case, — rigorously pertinent to the question 

 as all those "proofs were, — that she would not suffer 

 any apjiropriate answer to those proofs to be brought 

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

 w^as 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 Cockburn, 

 the "representative" of Great Britain at Geneva. 



No^y^il^American Case, if conceived in any other 

 spirit than that of just and fair exposition of the pre- 

 cise issue, — qu_^tionjthat is, whether the British Gov- 

 ernment had or had not incurred responsibility for 

 its want of due dilisjence in the matter of Confederate 

 cruisers fitted out in the ]3orts 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 migld 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 



