ALABAMA CLAIMS. 59 
Great Britain. That was the very question present- 
ed by the Treaty. 
Great Britain professed to be so much offended by 
the character of certain of the proofs adduced in the 
American Case,—rigorously pertinent to the question 
as all those proofs were,—that she would not suffer 
any appropriate answer to those proofs to be brought 
forward in her Counter-Case or in her Argument: it 
was not compatible with selfrespect,—it would be 
giving dignity to undignified arguments,—we were 
told by the British Press. Meanwhile, the very mat- 
ter which the British Government could not conde- 
scend to notice was both material and important to 
such a degree as very much to inflame the temper and 
exercise the ingenuity of Sir Alexander Cockburn, 
the “representative” of Great Britain at Geneva. 
Now, the American Case, if conceived in any other 
spirit than that of just and fair exposition of the pre- 
cise issue,—question, that is, whether the British Gov- 
ernment had or had not incurred responsibility for 
its want of due diligence in the matter of Confederate 
cruisers fitted out in the ports of Great Britain,—I 
say, if the American Government, in the preparation 
of its Case, had not been animated by the spirit of 
perfect fairness and justness, it might have gone into 
the inquiry of the political conduct of Great Britain 
in other times, and with reference to other nations, in 
the view of imputing to her Aadctual disregard of the 
law of nations in illustration of her present conduct 
toward the United States. We might have charged 
that, while her statesmen contend that they could do 
