124 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 
templated being heard for many months. And the 
result of all this meditation, and of all this earnest 
desire to serve his country, was a series of arguments 
mostly immaterial to the issue, as the final judgment 
of the Tribunal plainly shows, and coming in after the 
main question had been actually settled in the cases 
of the Alabama and the Florida. That is to say,— 
and it is in this relation the point is introduced,— 
the claims of the United States rested on a basis 
which all the great forensic skill and ability of Sir 
Roundell Palmer could not move,—which commend- 
ed itself to the éonfidence of the neutral Arbitrators, 
—and which even extorted the reluctant adhesion of 
the prejudiced British Arbitrator. 
Subsequently, on requirement of the Arbitrators, 
we discussed, in successive printed Arguments, the 
special question of the legal effect of the entry of 
the Florida into Mobile; the question of the recruit- 
ment of men for the Shenandoah at Melbourne; and 
the question of interest as an element of the indemni- 
ty due to the United States. 
QUESTION OF DAMAGES. 
Meanwhile, the Tribunal had voted definitively on 
the question of the liability or non-liability of Great 
Britain for the acts of the cruisers named in the 
“Case” of the United States, in the terms which will 
appear in explaining their final judgment. They had 
also voted on several of the incidental questions, such 
as the abstract question of due diligence, entry into 
Confederate ports, commission, and supply of coal, 
