ALABAMA CLAIMS. 147 
well known that he differed from them in certain respects, which 
would appear by the transactions of the Award. I think it is a 
pity when the thing is decided, when we are bound to act upon 
it, and when we are not really "sustified, in any feeling of honor 
or of good faith, in making any reclamation or quarrel at all 
with what has been done, that he should have thought it his 
duty to stir up and to renew all the strong arguments and con- 
tests upon which these Arbitrators have decided. [Cheers. ] 
I think if it was his opinion that we ought to acquiesce quietly 
and without murmur in the Award, he had better not have pub- 
lished his argument, and, if he thought it right to publish his 
argument, he had better have retrenched his adviee itself as to 
the arbitration.” 
Mr. Lowe can not help seeing that the “ Reasons” 
are not an opinion, but an “argument,” and an “ argu- 
ment” adverse to the conclusions of the writer. 
Thus, it would appear, such is the eccentric mental 
constitution of the Chief Justice, that while he is in- 
capable of going through any process of reasoning 
without inconsistencies and selfcontradictions at ev- 
ery step, so he can not perform an act, or recommend 
its performance, without at the same time setting 
forth ample reasons to forbid its performance. 
In the recent debate in Parliament, to be sure, on 
the Queen’s speech, some of the members of both 
Houses, especially of those in Opposition, speak in 
terms of laudation of the “ Reasons” of the Chief Jus- 
tice. Lord Cairns, on this occasion, seems to have for- 
gotten what he had said, on a previous occasion, of the 
‘judicial impartiality to be expected of an arbitrator. 
And Mr. Vernon Harcourt, in defending the Chief 
Justice against what the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
had said of him at Glasgow, unconsciously falls into 
