ALABAMA ‘CLAIMS, 169 
amount awarded as indemnity. Earl Granville, in- 
deed, does not fail to remind the Earl of Derby of the 
admission made by the latter in the House of Com- 
mons, to the effect that the Americans were very 
likely to establish their claims, or some of them at 
least, and to get their money. This admission on the 
part of Lord Stanley evinced his manliness and truth- 
fulness. Even the Chief Justice at Geneva was forced 
to concede the responsibility of Great Britain for the 
acts of the Alabama, and did not very skillfully es- 
cape making the same concession as to the Florida. 
The marvel is, that Lord Russell should have so 
persistently refused to agree to any terms of redress, 
when he himself could write to Lord Lyons on the 
27th of March, 1863, “that the cases of the Alabama 
and Oreto were a scandal, and, in some degree, a re- 
proach to our laws.” I demand of myself sometimes, 
in reflecting on the strange obstinacy of Lord Russell 
in this respect, as contrasted with the conduct of the 
Earl of Derby, the Earl of Clarendon, and Earl Gran- 
ville, whether there be not some mystery in the mat- 
ter, some undisclosed secret, some unknown moral co- 
ercion, to account for and explain the conduct of Lord 
Russell? The extraordinary incident of the failure 
of the Government to obtain from the Law Officers 
of the Crown any response to the call for their opin- 
jon in season to detain the Alabama,—which incident 
Sir Roundell Palmer vainly attempted to explain at 
Geneva,—would really tend to make one suspect that 
some member of the Government more powerful than 
himself had defeated those good intentions of Lord 
