ALABAMA CLAIMS. 147 



well known that Le differed from them in certain respects, which 

 would appear by the transactions of the Award. I think it is a 

 pity when the thing is decided, when we are bound to act upon 

 it, and when we are not really justified, in any feeling of honor 

 or of good faith, in making any reclamation or quarrel at all 

 with what has been done, that he should have thought it his 

 duty to stir up and to renew all the strong arguments and con- 

 tests upon which these Arbitrators have decided. [Cheers.] 

 I think if it was his opinion that we ought to acquiesce quietly 

 and without murmur in the Award, he had better not have pub- 

 lished his argument, and, if he thought it right to publish his 

 arorument, he had better have retrenched his advice itself as to 

 the arbitration." 



Mr. Lowe can not help seeing tliat the "Reasons" 

 are not an opinion^ but an " argument," and an " argu- 

 ment" adverse to the conclusions of the writer. 



Thus, it would appear, such is the eccentric mental 

 constitution of the Chief Justice, that while he is in- 

 capable of going through any process of reasoning 

 without inconsistencies and self-contradictions at ev- 

 ery step, so he can not perform an act, or recommend 

 its performance, without at the same time setting 

 forth ample reasons to forbid its performance. 



In the recent debate in Parliament, to be sure, on 

 the Queen's speech, some of the members of both 

 Houses, especially of those in Opposition, speak in 

 terms of laudation of the " Reasons" of the Chief Jus- 

 tice. Lord Cairns, on this occasion, seems to have for- 

 gotten what he had said, on a previous occasion, of the 

 judicial impartiality to be expected of an arbitrator. 

 And Mr. Vernon Harcourt, in defending the Chief 

 Justice against what the Chancellor of the Exchequer 

 had said of him at Glasgow, unconsciously foils into 



