Touching the claims of the government of the United States upon that of
Great Britain for compensation for the damages caused to American
commerce by the No. 290 and her kindred ships, I have the honor to call
your attention to a leading article in The Times of the 4th instant, a
copy of which is herewith enclosed. Although I have no evidence to
sustain the conjecture, the appearance of this editorial so soon after
Mr. Adams had communicated a copy of your No. 1835 to Lord Stanley, all
knowledge of which paper seems to have been concealed from the public,
would appear to indicate that the writer at that time was not ignorant
of that document, and that he had been inspired by some one in
authority. The public mind is daily being brought to the propriety of
taking some step in the direction of an honorable settlement of this
difficulty, and it is not improbable that an avowal on the part of the
government to adopt such a course would meet with a favorable reception
from the nation.
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.
[Untitled]
[From the
London Times, October 4,
1866.]
The speech of Lord Stanley at the Liverpool banquet was calculated,
and, perhaps, designed, to satisfy us that our relations with the
United States are safe in his hands. Those who may have been
inclined to distrust the friendly disposition of a conservative
foreign secretary towards the American people must have been
reassured by the cordial and respectful tone in which he spoke of
them, and the earnestness with which he deprecated the “hasty,
partial, and passionate criticism” of their institutions which
Americans attribute to English conservatives. Lord Stanley is
entitled to full credit for sincerity in the expression of these
sentiments, for, whatever may be said of his party, no man weighs
his words more carefully or betrays less of aristocratic or national
prejudice in his comments on foreign affairs. It is with some
confidence, therefore, that we invite his attention, as well as that
of the public, to a difference of long standing between England and
the United States, which, intractable as it seems, may, we are
persuaded, be set at rest, if the necessary temper and judgment be
brought to bear upon it.
A year has now almost elapsed since the correspondence between Lord
Russell and Mr. Adams respecting the so-called “Alabama claims” was
laid before the public. It was continued by Lord Clarendon, but soon
closed by mutual consent, and the two governments have tacitly
agreed to differ about a point which does not admit of being settled
by any established principles of international law. Great Britain
having declined to refer to arbitration her alleged liability for
captures made by the Alabama and other confederate cruisers, and the
United States having rejected the counter proposal of a joint
commission for the adjustment of other outstanding claims on both
sides, the matter remains in abeyance. The American government has
not withdrawn its demand, the British government has not receded
from its position, yet the friendly intercourse between them has not
been interrupted. When the Fenians menaced the Canadian frontier,
the neutrality laws were enforced against them with a vigor which
does President Johnson the highest honor, and if the prosecutions
then instituted against some of the leaders have since been
abandoned, we have been quite content to assume that good reasons
could be given for his forbearance. On the other hand, it is vain to
indulge the belief that our supposed infractions of neutrality
during the war have been condoned by the American public. They may
or may not support the President in putting down an open defiance of
their foreign enlistment act, but they still cherish a sense of
injury which found expression in the bill for modifying the
provisions of that act, and would make it very difficult to check
lawless reprisals on our commerce if Great Britain were unhappily
involved in a war. While this state of feeling exists among the
American people the diplomatic entente
cordiale may be imperilled at any moment. The exigencies of
party warfare have always influenced the foreign policy of the
United States. They are just now peculiarly urgent; the “Irish vote”
will probably turn the autumn elections, and the same motives which
have apparently led Mr. Seward to wink at the transport of warlike
stores to
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Mexico may
possibly tempt and almost force him on some future occasion to
revive the dormant Alabama claims. In the mean time, it is admitted
on all hands that the obligations of neutral powers in respect of
breaches of neutrality which they may have failed to prevent have
never been clearly ascertained, while no one ventures to maintain
that either our own or the American foreign enlistment act is in all
respects satisfactory. Is it, then, inconsistent with our national
dignity, or rather is it not at once the most dignified and the most
politic course, to reconsider dispassionately the questions arising
out of the Alabama case, and the best means of providing against
their recurrence? Would such a course be the less honorable or
statesmanlike because it might tend to conciliate public opinion in
America, and to remove incidentally any grudge which may still be
entertained against this country? We venture to submit that it would
not, and to suggest, moreover, that no better time could be selected
for this attempt than the present, when the grievances of which Mr.
Adams complained are neither obsolete nor too recent, when no other
source of misunderstanding exists to disturb the fair discussion of
them, and when the foreign affairs of this country have lately
passed into the hands of a new minister.
The controversy conducted by Lord Russell and Mr. Adams on behalf of
their respective governments really turned on a very few and very
simple issues. The latter contended that a neutral state is not only
bound to prohibit the participation of its own subjects in acts of
hostility against either of the belligerents, but responsible for
any damage which may result from its neglect or inability to do so.
He took his stand on the fact that certain vessels of war in the
confederate service had been constructed in British dock-yards,
equipped from, if not in, the same ports, manned chiefly by British
sailors, and commissioned at sea without having acquired any new
character by entering a confederate port. Hence he argued either
that our laws were inadequate to restrain abuses of our neutrality,
or that they were not properly enforced; and, in either case, he
insisted that Great Britain was liable for the consequences. Lord
Russell virtually, if not expressly, denied that a neutral state has
any duty towards a belligerent except the strict and lonest
execution of its own municipal laws. He maintained, however, that
our foreign enlistment act is sufficient for its purpose, and had
been enforced with due diligence as well as in perfect good faith by
our government, attributing the unfortunate escape of the Alabama to
the want of evidence to justify her detention. To Mr. Adams’s tender
of arbitration Lord Russell replied that an arbitrator’s decision
must be founded on a consideration of two questions, neither of
which Great Britain could submit to any independent tribunal—the
question whether the law officers of the Crown had correctly
interpreted a British statute, and the question whether the British
government had bona fide availed themselves
of the powers therein intrusted to them. On these grounds he
objected to any judicial investigation of the Alabama claims, either
by an arbitrator or even by a joint commission; though he expressed
his readiness to concur in the appointment of such commission to
deal with compensation cases of a different class. The United States
were naturally unwilling to accept an arrangement which would have
left open the very point in dispute, and so the controversy ended.
Nov, without going further into the argument than this, or
criticising any one of the historical precedents so copiously
adduced in support of either conclusion, we see no insuperable
obstacle to a solution which has something in common with Mr.
Adams’s proposal, and something with that of Lord Russell. Let a
joint commission be appointed, not to adjudicate upon the claims
preferred against Great Britain by American ship-owners, or to
review the transactions connected with the equipment of the Alabama
and her consorts, but to deliberate on the rights and duties of
neutrals in time of war, as hitherto determined by international law
or usage, and to devise, if possible, a set of rules which all
maritime nations should he invited to adopt, and to carry out by
legislative measures. A commission of this kind should not be
exclusively composed of British and American subjects, but should
include eminent continental jurists, and should be invested with the
amplest possible liberty of recommendation. If, upon a perusal of
their report, her Majesty’s government shall be of opinion that,
under the circumstances, some reparation is due, either in
international law or in international equity, to the United States
in respect of the ravages of the Alabama, it will not be too late to
make it, and no false pride should prevent our doing so with a good
grace.
If it be said that Lord Stanley cannot allow these claims to be
reopened, even indirectly, without reflecting injuriously on the
conduct of his predecessor, the answer is obvious. Mr. Adams’s
representation to Lord Russell was in the nature of a legal demand,
and it was properly met by a legal demurrer. It was practically
granted that our law had been violated in the equipment of the
Alabama, and that the commercial marine of the United States had
suffered grievous injury thereby; but the doubt was whether, in the
absence of culpable neglect on the part of our government, there was
any remedy against us. This Lord Russell denied, and we have yet to
learn that he was wrong in his exposition of the law, while he was
certainly right if the precedent of the Portuguese claims on the
United States is to be followed. On the other hand, as every one
knows, the Alabama would never have got to sea but for the most
inopportune illness of the Queen’s advocate, and this consideration,
though it may clear the government from the charge of neglect, does
in some degree affect the moral aspect of the case. The loss
sustained by American commerce in consequence may be damnum sine injuria, and therefore no ground
of a legal action; and yet it may be a wise act of courtesy to waive
the benefit of this plea. The time has come when such a
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concession is no longer
open to misconstruction, and would be accepted by the United States
as a spontaneous act of good will. At all events, there can be
nothing derogatory to the honor of England in offering to submit her
neutrality laws, together with those of the United States, to
revision by a mixed commission. No country has more to lose by a lax
interpretation of these laws, and justice compels us to acknowledge
that, had the United States government connived at their evasion,
the Fenian expedition might have inflicted much greater mischief on
Canada. This will not be forgotten by Parliament, if it should be
hereafter called upon to sanction overtures which may lead to an
amicable compromise of the Alabama claims.
