ALABAMA CLAIMS. 41 
not include claims on account of the Queen’s proclama- 
tion recognizing the belligerence of the Confederates, 
Nevertheless, when, in England, the argument of 
the American Case had been read and pondered,— 
when it was perceived that this argument impiited to 
Great Britain constructive complicity with the Con- 
federates by reason of the culpable negligence of the 
British Government to arrest the enterprises of such 
vessels as the Alabama, the Llorida, and the Shenan- 
doah,—and, finally, when it was thus understood that, 
in preferring claim for all the loss or injury growing 
out of the acts of those cruisers, whether to the Gov- 
ernment or to private citizens, the United States did, 
in express terms as well as in legal intendment, hold 
the British Government responsible for prolongation 
of our Civil War and the cost of its prosecution,— 
when all these relations of the subject came to be un- 
derstood, the public mind in England, and especially 
the commercial mind, recurred at once to the event 
which constituted at the time the dominant pre-occu- 
pation of Europe, namely, the war indemnity of six 
milliards so recently imposed by Germany.on France. 
In view of this, a panic terror seemed to seize upon 
London, similar to what occasionally occurs in New 
York and other great money centres, producing a 
state of demonstrative emotion, which, to calm ob- 
servers outside of such centres, looks like the spas- 
modic agitation of men who have lost their senses, 
rather than intelligent human action. Such, indeed, 
is all panic terror, as exemplified by numerous his- 
torical incidents of the contagious influence, both in 
