ALABAMA CLAIMS. 81 
News, the Saturday Review, the Spectator, the Pall 
Mall Gazette, the Manchester Guardian, and other 
British journals generally, are certainly conducted 
with great ability, and are second, in character and in 
value, to no others in Europe. In view of which it 
must be confessed that the outery which they made 
against the American Case seemed to me at the time 
to be altogether unworthy of them and of England. 
It was my opinion on reading the American Case 
for the first time, and is my opinion now, after re- 
peated readings, that it is not only a document of 
signal ability, learning, and forensic force,—which, in- 
deed, every body admits,—but that it is also temper- 
ate in language and dignified in spirit, as becomes 
any state paper which is issued in the name of the 
United States. 
I do not mean to say that it is so cold a document 
as the British Case. Warmth or coldness of color is a 
matter of taste, in respect of which the United States 
have no call to criticise Great Britain, and Great Brit- 
ain has no right to criticise the United-States. 
We may presume that, in the exercise of its un- 
questionable right, the Government of the United 
States made up its Case in the aim of convincing the 
Arbitrators, and not with any dominant purpose or 
special expectation of pleasing Great Britain. 
But there is no just cause of exception to the gen- 
eral tenor, spirit, or style of the American Case. Its 
facts are pertinent ; its reasonings are cogent ; its con- 
clusions are logical: and in all that is the true ex- 
planation of the emotion it occasioned in England. 
