ALABAMA CLAIMS. 143 



cidessus. Si I'ane on I'autve de ces conditions vient a manquer, 

 c'est ail Tribunal d'y sujipleer en interpretant et appliquaut les 

 trois Regies de son mieux et en toute conscience." 



At the time wlien Sir Alexander sent to |)ress bis 

 misrepresentation of the opinions of Mr. Stsempfli, he 

 had in his hands the authentic statement thereof 

 as printed at Geneva. There is no excuse, therefore, 

 for this malicious and dishonorable endeavor of the 

 British Arbitrator to prejudice the character of the 

 Swiss Arbitrator in Great Britain. 



Nevertheless, Mr. Stampfli, according to "Sir Alex- 

 ander, having cut adrift from all positive law, adopts 

 instead "speculative notions," or "some intuitive per- 

 ception of right and wrong ;" and such ideas Sir Al- 

 exander repudiates : or, as the London Telegraph has 

 it, "the Chief Justice, armed with sarcasm as well as 

 lofric, runs full tilt asjainst that doctrine :" to wit, the 

 doctrine, still in the words of the Tdcgrapli^ " that the 

 duties which nations owe to each other must be de- 

 termined by the light of intuitive principles of jus- 

 tice." The Telegraph goes on, with truth and reason, 

 to say that, after all, Mr. St^empfli is right, if he insists 

 that " the rules of fair dealing, which we term inter- 

 national law, are not law in the same sense as the pos- 

 itive edicts of the common law ; for the essence of 

 such edicts is that they come from a lawgiver in the 

 form of a parliament or a sovereign : the rules of in- 

 ternational justice are simply the code which experi- 

 ence and the judgment of able men have shown to be 

 fair or expedient, but every civilized country feels 

 them to be not less binding on that account." With- 



