ALABAMA CLAIMS. 139 



ancler, even lie must have seen that, in confessing and 

 ])roving the guilt of his Government, he estops him- 

 self from denying the justice of the accusation pre- 

 ferred by the United States. 



But the point of honor was considered when the 

 Treaty was signed. How strangely Sir Alexander 

 forgets the attitude in which this objection stands in 

 Lord Kussell's correspondence Avith Mr. Adams. If 

 there was any question of honor in the controversy, 

 that it was which forbade a treaty of arbitration, as 

 Lord Russell constantly maintained. But three suc- 

 cessive Foreign Ministries, represented by Lord Stan- 

 ley, Lord Clarendon, and Lord Granville, had rightly 

 decided that the question at issue did not involve the 

 honor of the British Government. Sir Alexander 

 wastes his words over a dead issue, utterly buried out 

 of sight by the stipulations of the Treaty of Wash- 

 in2:tou. 



Mr. John Lemoinne expresses the judgment of Eu- 

 rope, and anticipates that of history, in condemning 

 Sir Alexander's "vehemence of polemic and bitter- 

 ness of discussion, so extraordinary in an official doc- 

 ument." 



Sti'angely enough, the Saturday Beview^ which pre- 

 tends to see " scurrility" in the American Case and 

 Argument, where it does not exist, is blind to it in 

 the " Reasons," where it is a flagrant fact. 



Meanwhile, there is nothing accusatory of Great 

 Britain in the American Case, — there is nothing of 

 earnest inculpation of the British Government in the 

 American Argument, — which is not greatly exceeded 



