ALABAMA CLAIMS. 1G9 



amount awarded as indemnity. Earl Granville, in- 

 deed, does not fail to remind the Earl of Derby of the 

 admission made by the latter in the House of Com- 

 mons, to the effect that the Americans were very 

 likely to establish their claims, or some of them at 

 least, and to get their money. This admission on the 

 part of Lord Stanley evinced his manliness and truth- 

 fulness. Even the Chief Justice at Geneva was forced 

 to concede the responsibility of Great Britain for the 

 acts of the Alabama, and did not very skillfully es- 

 cape making the same concession as to the Florida. 



The marvel is, that Lord Eussell should have so 

 persistently refused to agree to' any terms of redress, 

 when he himself could write to Lord Lyons on the 

 27th of March, 1863, " that the cases of the Alalama 

 and Oreto were a scandal, and, in some degree, a re- 

 proach to our laws." I demand of myself sometimes, 

 in reflecting on the strange obstinacy of Lord Russell 

 in this respect, as contrasted with the conduct of the 

 Earl of Derby, the Earl of Clarendon, and Earl Gran- 

 ville, whether there be not some mystery in the mat- 

 ter, some undisclosed secret, some unknown moral co- 

 ercion, to account for and explain the conduct of Lord 

 Russell ? The extraordinary incident of the failure 

 of the Government to obtain from the Law Officers 

 of the Crown any response to the call for their opin- 

 ion in season to detain the Alabama, — which incident 

 Sir Roundell Palmer vainly attempted to explain at 

 Geneva, — would really tend to make one suspect that 

 some member of the Government more powerful than 

 himself had defeated those good intentions of Lord 



