ALABAMA CLAIMS. 135 



er or jurisdiction except such as the Treaty confers? 

 To do so was indecent in itself, and could have no ef- 

 fect other than to embarrass the British Government. 

 With his habitual inconsistency of thought, to be 

 sure, he advises submission to^the judgment of the 

 Arbitrators, while exhausting himself in efforts to 

 shake its moral strength and that of the Treaty. The 

 Times [September 28] plainly sees that the "Kea- 

 sons" of Sir Alexander "will be duly turned to ac- 

 count by Opposition critics." And perhaps that was 

 one of the objects Sir Alexander had in view, in thus 

 usurping the function to judge the Treaty under the 

 cover of acting as Arbitrator to judge the specific 

 questions submitted by the Treaty. 



The Times admits that the " severity of the criti- 

 cism passed by the Chief Justice on the United States 

 and their Agents, and even^ on his colleagues, may, 

 from a diplomatic point of view, be some ground for 

 regret ;" . . . that " perhaps he was too ready to con- 

 sider himself the representative of England;" that 

 "perhaps he takes more than a judicial pleasure" in 

 one argumentative suggestion ; and that " he dwells, 

 perhaps, with something too much of the delight of 

 an advocate" on some other point; and in each one 

 of these admissions, qualified as they are, we perceive 

 recoscnition of the fact that, in his "Reasons," Sir 

 Alexander does not speak as an international Arbi- 

 trator, or manifest the qualities which ought to char- 

 acterize a Chief Justice. 



The JSfews indicates other singular traits of " irrel- 

 evance " and confusion of mind in the " Reasons." 



