60 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 
nothing outside of an Act of Parliament, they had no 
such Act until 1819, and were therefore, prior to that 
time, confessedly impotent, and we might have added 
willfully so, to observe the duties of neutrality; we 
might have scrutinized her national.history to select 
conspicuous examples of her acts of violence, in: dis- 
regard of the law of nations, against numerous States, 
including ourselves; we might have appealed to ev- 
ery volume of international law in existence, from the 
time of Grotius to this day, and cited page after page 
to the conclusion of the unjust international policy 
of Great Britain; and we might have argued from all 
this to infer intentional omission of the British Gov- 
ernment to prevent the escape of the Alabama and 
the Florida. 
But such arguments, you will say, would have been 
forced, remote, of doubtful relevance, and of a nature 
offensive to England. Be it so: they would, if you 
please, have been irrelevant, impertinent, offensive. 
And no such arguments are found in the American 
Case. 
But such are the arguments which pervade the 
British Case, Counter-Case, and Argument, and the 
opinions of the British member of the Tribunal. In- 
stead of defending its own conduct in the matter 
at issue, the British Government travels out of the 
record to find fault with the conduct of the United 
States at other times, and with respect to other na- 
tions. It presumes to take upon itself the function 
of personating Spain, Portugal, Nicaragua, and to drag 
before the Tribunal at Geneva controversies between 
