ALABAMA CLAIMS. 93 
Arbitrator, we shall have but too much necessity to 
speak in describing the acts of the Tribunal. 
MR. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 
In the American Arbitrator, Mr. Charles Francis 
Adams, the Tribunal had a member worthy of the 
companionship of Count Frederic Sclopis. 
In the United States, persons have been found so 
foolish as to reproach Mr. Adams because of the his- 
torical eminence of his father and of his grandfather, 
and even because of the intelligence and cultivation 
of his sons: as if it were a crime in a Republic for a 
father to have a good son, or a son a good father, or 
to live in the holy atmosphere of a succession of wise 
and virtuous mothers. 
Besides, if it be meritorious to rise to distinction 
from lowliness and poverty, it is not less so to resist 
and overcome the obstacles to. personal distinction 
created by parental station or wealth. In this, which 
is the only correct view of thessubject, all men are 
selfmade. The attributes of Mr. Charles Francis 
Adams are his own: distinguished parliamentary ca- 
reer in the Legislature of the State of Massachusetts 
and in the Congress of the United States,—literary 
merits of a high order as displayed in his“ Life and 
Writings of John Adams,”—able diplomatic repre- 
sentation of his Government in Great Britain during 
the whole dark period of our Civil War. He pos- 
sessed qualities, acquirements, and experience, general 
and special, which seemed to invite his appointment 
as American Arbitrator; and in the dischar¥e of the 
