II.–The controversy submitted to arbitration.

The counsel of the United States, in propounding to this august tribunal the cause in controversy between that nation and Great Britain, which its deliberations are to explore and its award to determine, have no occasion to feel that the celebrated publicists who represent the friendly nations which take part in this great arbitration are less instructed, already, in the general character and history of the public transactions which are to form the ground-work of the argument, than the eminent public servants of the contending parties, who are joined with them in the composition of the tribunal.The arbitrators already acquainted with the general nature of the facts.

If the publicity and prominence of these events, so recent in the memory, did not themselves preclude any such suggestion, the ample record supplied by the documents presented to the tribunal by the two governments has put the arbitration in full possession of all facts, and their evidence, which, in the judgment of any one, can be thought relevant to the discussion of the principal and collateral issues, to which the judgment of the tribunal will need to be applied. In pursuing, therefore, our immediate purpose of attracting the attention of the tribunal to the elements of the controversy arising between the two nations, upon the actual events which gave it birth, and as it has been shaped for the investigation and determination of the tribunal by the contending parties in the treaty by which its jurisdiction is created, we shall have occasion to consider no matters which are either obscure or disputable, and none which may not be drawn with the same confidence from the documents laid before the tribunal by Great Britain, as from those presented by the United States.

I. When the great social and political interests developed by the institution of slavery, as it existed in the United (States, carried the popular agitations beyond the bounds of obedience to the laws and loyalty to the Government of the United States, as set forth in Part II of the Case of Great Britain and Part II of the Case of the United States, it was not long before a great population occupying a large territory was drawn into an armed insurrection, and, as a next step, pushed into a military rebellion against the authority of the Government. The strength and menace of the attempted revolt soon grew to such proportions that the Government had recourse, in dealing with these rebellious hostilities urged against it, to its undoubted right of superadding to its peaceful authority of sovereignty the exercise of belligerent powers. It met the military array of the rebellion with the loyal forces of the nation, and used all the means for its suppression which the wealth, the courage, and the patriotism of the people placed at its disposal. Itself a great maritime power, both in naval strength and commercial prosperity, the resources of the rebellion included neither. The Government, by prompt, adequate, and successful exhibition of its naval strength, shut up the whole sea board of the territory in rebellion by a blockade, and was proceeding to cut it off from all opportunity of establishing [Page 8] foreign commerce, or maintaining maritime hostilities, from its own resources.In suppressing an armed insurrection the United States exercised belligerent powers, and prevented insurgents from carrying on maritime war from their own resources.

II. The principles of the law of nations recognize this necessity which the vigor and magnitude of rebel hostilities may impose upon the government of a nation, and attribute to a resort to its belligerent powers, in such case, no consequences affecting the attitude toward each other of the parties to these hostilities. Other nations are, manifestly, no parties to the conflict, and cannot become such parties, unless by choice, which is intervention, or by the enlargement of the theater of hostilities, or their actual course, forcing upon their notice such questions as specifically arise for solution.The right to do this unquestioned. Other nations no parties to the conflict.

The effect of intervention is unequivocal. If attempted in aid of the belligerent sovereign, but without his request, it is officious, and may be unwelcome. If in aid of the rebels, against the sovereign, it is an espousal of their cause, and an act of war against the belligerent sovereign. In such a case, no situation of neutrality arises.Abstinence of intervention by another power is not “neutrality.”

But, if a nation abstains from intervention in the conflict between a sovereign nation and its rebels, it is inaccurate to treat this abstinence as neutrality. It is simply an unbroken maintenance of the international relations which subsisted between the two powers before the domestic peace of one of them suffered disturbance. It would shock the moral sense of civilization to speak of the United States as standing neutral between Great Britain and the Sepoy rebellion in India, or of Great Britain as standing neutral between the commune of Paris and the government of France.It is a maintenance of previously existing relations.

But, when the actual hostilities in which a government is engaged, in the suppression of a rebellion, encroach upon the established relations between it and friendly powers, the latter have presented to them the question whether they will, each for itself, acquiesce in the exercise of belligerent powers, as sought to be made effective against the rebels, at the cost of inteference with the peaceful rights of commerce and intercourse which subsisted before the nation was brought into this stress by its domestic rebellion.Other powers have to decide in such case only whether they acquiesce in the exercise of belligerent powers by the sovereign.

But this question, under the rules governing the subject in the modern law of nations, can have but one answer. The nation which has superadded belligerent rights to those of sovereignty, is entitled so to do, and resistance by other nations to the lair consequences of such rights upon their interests, is a violation of the law of nations, and an unjust intervention in the domestic conflict.Non-acquiescence ns intervention.

In regard to the hostilities prosecuted against the sovereign by the rebel, if they should pass beyond the bounds of intestine war and obtrude themselves upon the notice of other sovereign powers, the actual occurrences which raise the question of their treatment by such powers may be trusted, also, to solve it. If the rebels should exhibit their strength by a blockade of any of the ports of the nation, or should keep the seas with cruisers, and assert the right of search, of capture, and of prize condemnation, against the ships or cargoes of another nation, the power thus affected will determine for itself how it will treat this new disturber of its peaceful rights and interests. It has no antecedent obligations of friendship, of treaty, or of recognition, even, which compel it to acquiesce, under the law of nations, in the legitimacy of this violence. It may pierce by force the rebel blockade which impedes its commerce, resist and resent the search and capture which threaten its maritime property, and reject [Page 9] the asserted prize jurisdiction as working no change of title. And it may do all this, without, in the least, taking part in the hostilities of the government against the rebels or espousing its cause, but simply in maintenance of its own rights and interests.Questions arising beyond territorial limits of the sovereign should be decided as they arise.

Undoubtedly, it is competent for other nations upon whose notice the hostilities of rebellion, revolution, or revolt may obtrude themselves, to yield such assent and submission to their exercise, to the disturbance of their own rights and to the disparagement of their own interests, as, under sentiments of justice, fair play, or humanity, they may find an adequate motive for.

This course tends to, and naturally results in, a tacit toleration of this violence as in the nature of belligerent power, because it is practiced in that sense and under that justification by those who exert it. Placed, then, between the contending parties in the attitude of obligatory submission to the belligerent right of the sovereign, and of voluntary tolerance of the belligerent practices of the rebels, other nations fall gradually into an equality and impartiality in dealing with the rightful belligerent power and the de facto belligerent force, which assimilates itself to the statics which, between two rightful belligerent powers, is called, in the law of nations, neutrality.Such course se cures impartiality and when justified by results, an equality between contending parties, which resembles what is known as neutrality when exercised between rightful belligerents.

This principle of public law, which we here insist upon, that is to say, the right of a sovereign engaged in the suppression of rebellion, to superadd belligerent powers to its resources of peaceful authority in dealing with the hostilities urged against it, and to expect from other nations an acceptance of the situation, as toward the sovereign so engaged, with the same consequences to themselves as if the same belligerent powers were put forth in solemn war, had been definitely held by the Supreme Court of the United States in a celebrated judgment pronounced by Chief Justice Marshall in the case of Rose v. Himely, in the year 1808. The case arose upon the exercise of belligerent powers by France in attempting to reduce the revolt of the island of San Domingo, and is reported in 4 Cranch, (Sup. Ct. Rep., p. 241.) It was only necessary, therefore, for the inferior courts of the United States, and for the Supreme Court on final appeal, in establishing this principle of public law in its operation upon other nations, when the United States were exercising belligerent powers in suppression of their domestic rebellion, to follow the reason and authority which had been accepted, as a rule of the law of nations, in this early case. We refer to the judgment in the “prize causes,” reported in 2 Black’s Sup. Ct. Rep., p. 635.This principle recognized by the United States Supreme Court.

III. The only notable instances, before the rebellion in the United States, perhaps the only instances, in which friendly nations have been placed by this obligatory recognition of belligerent rights in the sovereign, and voluntary tolerance of belligerent powers in rebels, in an attitude assimilated to neutrality, have been where the conflict was of subject states seeking to recover their freedom, or between revolted colonies and the mother country, where independence in position, in boundaries, in interests, in population, and in destiny, already existing, in fact the only tie which remained to be severed was that of political sovereignty, and the severance of that tie was the only motive, object, operation, and expected result of the revolt. In such cases, the tendency on the part of other nations to adopt a practical neutrality is greatly prompted and facilitated by the political nature of the conflict, and the further consideration that the intervening seas, the common possession of all nations, are, necessarily, [Page 10] included in the theater of the war, and must become, more or less, the theater of actual hostilities. From such conflicts, every feature of domestic or intestine rebellion is necessarily absent. They are as dissimilar as are the throes of natural birth from the violence and horrors of mutilation. This difference asserts itself, at once, to the public judgment of other nations, and, scarcely later, to the contending parties, and thus, by the progress of the conflict, a habit of practical neutrality is easily established. But this habit imports nothing inconsistent with the principles we have insisted upon. The allowance by other nations of belligerent methods to the sovereign, is obligatory, systematic, and as his right. The allowance of them to the rebels is voluntary, pro re natâ always, and of sufferance.Previous instances in point.Belligerent powers belong to the sovereign of right; to the rebel, of sufferance.

IV. In the first moments of the conflict, and when its confinement, as a domestic rebellion, within the territory of the United States, was successfully engaging the attention and the naval strength of the Government, Great Britain intervened, and assumed, by an act of sovereignty, exercised by the royal prerogative of the Crown as the representative of the nation in its foreign relations, to exalt the rebel hostilities to the same level with the belligerent rights of the United States in their suppression, and to place itself in the same attitude in reference to the conflict, as if it were a public war waged by two nations in their sovereign right, towards whom, under the law of nations, Great Britain was under equal obligations, independent of any choice, to respect their belligerent operations and maintain neutrality.Conferring belligerent lights on the insurgents by Great Britain was an intervention.

The circumstances under which this celebrated proclamation of the Queen of Great Britain, of the judgment or that nation upon, and its purposes toward, the conflict pending within the territory of the United States between that Government and the rebels against its authority, was made, are set forth in Part II of the Case of the United States, pp. 43–65, and in Part II of the Case of Her Majesty’s government, pp. 4–9. Our present purpose in referring to it is, merely, as being the first step taken by Great Britain in its relations to the conflict in the United States, which, as they showed themselves throughout its course, and have formed the subject of diplomatic correspondence between the two governments, and, finally, of the first eleven articles of the treaty of Washington, have given rise to the contentions between Great Britain and the United States which are submitted to this tribunal. It is only in its bearings upon these issues that we now comment upon its character and consequences, interpreted by the law of nations, as exhibited in the actual events that followed it.The Queen’s proclamation.

(a.) This proclamation, issued in London on the 13th of May, 1861, was purely voluntary, and anticipated the occurrence of any practical occasion for dealing with any actual rebel hostilities, which had invaded, or threatened to invade, the peace or dignity of Great Britain, or the security of the maritime or other property or rights of its subjects.Was voluntary and anticipatory.

(b.) It was not required, in the least, in reference to the relations of Great Britain to the United States. They were fixed by intercourse, by friendship, and by treaties, in all general aspects, and by the principles of the law of nations, applicable to the new situation, which we have already insisted upon.Was not called for by the relations between the two governments.

(c.) It had no justification in the public acts by which nations announce to their people and to the world their sovereign purpose to take part in, or to hold aloof from, a public war [Page 11] waged between sovereign powers, and thus enable their subjects to conform their conduct to the purpose, thus proclaimed, of their government. The existence of a civil war within the territory of a nation, certainly does not call for a proclamation from other powers that they do not espouse the cause of either party to this domestic strife.Had no justification.

(d.) The intervention of this public act of Great Britain produced certain important changes in the moral and in the legal relations in which its subjects, its commerce, its wealth, all its manifold resources, if aroused to active interference in aid of the rebellion, would stand, in the public opinion of the world, in the municipal jurisprudence of the realm, and in the doctrines of the law of nations.And changed the legal relations between Great Britain and the insurgents.

So long as the rebellion in the United States remained unaccredited with belligerent rights, all maritime warfare in its name would have borne the legal character of piratical violence and robbery. It would have been justiciable as such every-where, and punishable according to the jurisdiction to which it was made amenable. “With professed pirates there is no state of peace. They are the enemies of every country, and at all times; and, therefore, are universally subject to the extreme rights of war.” (Ld. Stowell, in case of the Le Louis, 3 Dods. Adm. Rep., 244, 246.) “As every man, by the usage of our European nations, is justiciable in the place where the crime is committed, so are pirates, being reputed out of the protection of all laws and privileges, to be tried in what parts soever they are taken.” “They are outlawed, as I may say, by the laws of all nations, that is, out of the protection of all princes and of all law s whatsoever. Everybody is commissioned, and is to be armed against them, as against rebels and traitors, to subdue and to root them out.” “That which is called robbing upon the highway, the same being done upon the water is piracy.” “When this is done upon the sea, without a lawful commission of war or reprisals, it is downright piracy.” (Sir Lionel Jenkins, as cited in 1 Phill. Int. Law, §§ 356,358.) The interposition of the Queen’s proclamation relieved from the terrible proscription, pursuit, and punishment thus denounced, all who should take the seas in aid of the rebellion against the United States, and exposed them, at the worst, to the municipal penalties of the foreign-enlistment act, or the fate of prisoners of war.Its effect upon the act of carrying on war on the high seas.

So, too, all commercial contracts, including the raising of money by loan, the building or fitting of vessels, the sale of arms or munitions or other supplies in aid of insurrection or domestic rebellion in a foreign state, are absolutely condemned as immoral in the law of England, and are proscribed by the courts of justice. (3 Phill. Int. Law, § 151; Forsyth Cons. Law, pp. 236–7.) The effect of the Queen’s proclamation was to relieve all such contracts in aid of the resources of the rebellion from this proscription for immorality, which, otherwise, the law of England applied to them.Its effect upon commercial contracts.

V. This public act of the government of Great Britain, of such profound import in its bearing upon the conflict which the United States were addressing themselves to, opened to the minds of the British people entirely new relations, moral, political, and legal, with the pending hostilities, and was followed by an active, constant, and systematic contribution from their inexhaustible financial and commercial resources, in supply of the deficiencies of the rebels, and in reduction of the disparity of strength between them and their Government. The methods and the results, in their nature and magnitude, of this participation of the people of Great Britain in the [Page 12] domestic conflict which raged in the United States, are presented to the notice of the tribunal in the Case of the United States, are attempted to be qualified or justified in the Case and Counter Case of Her Britannic Majesty, and are displayed in the volumes of evidence submitted in support of the opposite contentions of the parties before the arbitrators. They were the subjects of contemporaneous correspondence between the two governments, in detail, at every stage of their occurrence, and, since the suppression of the rebellion, the adverse views of the governments concerning them, by the fortunate result of a long, a difficult, and an honorable and amicable course of negotiation, have been put in the way to a final settlement by the judgment and award of this tribunal. It only remains for us, under this division of the argument, to direct the attention of the arbitrators to the situation in which the governments of Great Britain and the United States stood toward each other, and to the subjects of difference between them, at the close of the domestic hostilities in connection with which they had arisen, and to the disposition of those differences sought to be accomplished by the treaty of Washington and the friendly deliberations of the arbitrators.It was followed by systematic contributions in aid of the insurgents.

VI. The United States, notwithstanding the incompetency of the resources of the rebellion in these regards, and the adequate power and success of the Government in suppressing any such efforts, suffered during the conflict, in a very great degree, the injuries which can only be inflicted by hostile commerce and maritime warfare. In the three forms which make up the struggles off maritime war, foreign trade in contraband, violation of blockade, and prize capture, the United States were seriously vexed throughout their conflict, although they were engaged with an adversary which had no commerce, could build, equip, arm, or man no ships, kept open no ports, could furnish no convoy, offer or meet no naval battle, bring no prize infra præsidia or under judicial condemnation. By these maritime hostilities, their immense naval force was kept constantly occupied for four years, and their commercial marine was plundered, burnt, and driven from the seas. Their carrying trade in the commerce of other nations was swept away from them, and, in their own commerce, placed at a disadvantage in rates of insurance and freight. In a word, without a maritime enemy or a naval war, the United States suffered the stress, the injuries, and the losses which only naval belligerency could inflict.The United States suffered great injuries.

VII. In looking for the agencies and operations which had wrought these disasters, the public history of the hostilities, and not less the definite and comprehensive proofs laid before this tribunal, exhibit them as worked out by schemes and enterprises of British origin, maintained by British resources, and placed at the service of the rebellion, under whatever motive of cupidity, of sympathy with that cause, or of enmity to the United States. Systems of British contraband trade, and organized merchant fleets for the breach of the blockade established by the United States; the British possessions, neighboring to the theater of the domestic war, made depots of hostile trade and covers for naval war—Which resulted from aid and assistance originating in British jurisdiction.

“accommoda fraudi

Armorumque dolis;”

ships of war, British-built, armed and supplied, swift and vigilant for the destruction of peaceful commerce, swift and vigilant in elusion of armed pursuit—these were the agencies and operations which the rebel hostilities wrought into the service of their maritime war, and these the authors [Page 13] of the wide-reaching disasters which the maritime property of the United States was subjected to.

VIII. A further examination shows, upon definite and unequivocal evidence, that these powerful and effective contributions of British aid to the pressing occasions of the rebel war, did not spring from the spontaneous and casual, disconnected, and fluctuating motives or impulses of mercantile adventure or cupidity, nor were their immense and prolonged, operations sustained and carried forward by any such vague and irresponsible agencies. They were induced, stimulated, and directed by official and authentic efforts, in the name and by the authority of the rebel administration, represented by established agencies and permanent agents within the territory of Great Britain. It was an occupation of that territory, and an application of the manifold means which the boundless resources of its people supplied, by agents of the different departments of the rebel administration, there to conduct the preparations of its hostilities against the United States for which its original internal resources did not furnish the means, and which the belligerent power of the United States could prevent from being introduced or carried on within it. It was this system which is justly described, in the Case of the United States, and exhibited in the proofs, as equivalent, within the sphere of its operations, to using Great Britain as “the arsenal, the navy-yard, and the treasury of the insurgent confederates.”This aid was organized, systematic, and official.

IX. If the actual method and agencies of these disasters were thus manifest, the magnitude and permanence of the injuries suffered from them by the United States are, also, indisputable. These injuries were specific, in the shape of private losses and public expenditures, capable of somewhat accurate ascertainment and computation. They were also general, (1,) in the burdens upon the commerce of the United States produced by this naval warfare, and of which the enhanced premiums of insurance furnish some measure, and (2,) in the reduction of the mercantile marine of the United States, and the tansfer of its trade to the British flag, which the public records of its tonnage will disclose. Besides injuries in these forms, the influence of these maritime hostilities upon the conduct, severity, length, and burdens of the war forced upon the Government of the United States, in maintenance of its authority and in suppression of the rebellion, constitute another head of injuries suffered by the United States from the prosecution of these maritime hostilities. In the aggregate, then, these injuries make up the body of the grievance which the United States have suffered from the incorporation into the rebel strength and war of the aforesaid agencies and operations, contributed thereto from the interests, the sympathies, and the resources of the people of Great Britain.Nature of the injuries inflicted on the United States.

X. Upon a survey of the whole field of the international relations which had been maintained toward it by other friendly powers during the severe trials through which it had passed, the Government of the United States found no occasion to occupy itself with any grievance or to lament any disasters which it had suffered from foreign aid to the strength and persistence of the rebellion from any other source than from the action and agency of the people of Great Britain. If other great powers had followed, at greater or less intervals, the precedent of the governmental act of Great Britain in its proclamation, and issued formal declarations in the same sense, these governments had, essentially, kept the action of their subjects within the obligations of abstinence from the contest in obedience [Page 14] to the requirements of the law of nations. The United States, therefore, had no duty to themselves and their citizens, and none to their position among the nations of the world, and in maintenance of justice and friendship in the future, which called upon them to assert any rights or redress any wrongs growing out of the conduct toward them of any other power than Great Britain.No other nation instrumental in inflicting them.

XI. The course of the public correspondence between the governments of Great Britain and the United States, whether contemporaneous with or subsequent to the events to which it related, disclosed so wide a difference in the estimates which the two governments placed upon the rights and duties of satisfaction and indemnity for the injuries the United States had suffered, and for which they were demanding redress from Great Britain, as to produce a situation of the greatest gravity and difficulty. Although it may be confidently hoped that the more general acceptance of the obligations of justice between nations has made it more and more difficult for two such governments to find themselves in the necessity of appealing to the resort by which, as Vattel expresses it, “a nation prosecutes its right by force,” yet unappeased complaints of the magnitude and severity of those preferred by the United States against Great Britain do not easily pass into oblivion without some form of adjudication. Whether or not the resources of international justice shall ever furnish to nations a compulsory tribunal of reason that will supersede what Lord Bacon calls “the highest trials of right, when princes and states that acknowledge no superior upon earth shall put themselves upon the justice of God for the deciding of their controversies by such success as it shall please Him to give on either side,” it has proved to be within the compass of the public reason and justice of the two powerful, enlightened, and kindred nations, parties to this great controversy, to subtract it from the adjudication of “war, the terrible litigation of states.” By amicable negotiations which have produced the treaty of Washington, the high contracting parties have reduced their differences to a formal and definite expression and description of the claims for satisfaction and indemnity by Great Britain which the United States insist upon, and that nation contests, and have submitted to the award of this august tribunal the final determination of the same.They form the subject of this arbitration.

The Case of the United States sets forth the text of those articles of the treaty of Washington which provide for the constitution of the tribunal of arbitration, and ascertain and state the subject-matter for its jurisdiction, the measure of its powers, and the form and effect of its authorized award. In the full light of the negotiations which led to and attended this consummation, and which are laid before the tribunal, in the Oases and proofs of the contending parties, the arbitrators will find no difficulty in affixing to the terms of the treaty their true and certain meaning.The provisions of the treaty of Washington respecting the arbitration.

We desire, by a few observations, to attract the attention of the arbitrators to some principal features of these provisions of the treaty.

I. The situation giving occasion to and intended to be met by these provisions of the treaty is described as “differences that have arisen between the Government of the United States and the government of Her Britannic Majesty, and still exist, growing out of the acts committed by the several vessels which have given rise to the claims generically known as the ‘Alabama claims.’” The only other recital bearing upon this subject, before the operative provisions of the treaty for the disposition of these differences, is to the effect that “Her Britannic Majesty has authorized her high commissioners and [Page 15] plenipotentiaries to express in a friendly spirit the regret felt by Her Majesty’s government for the escape, under whatever circumstances, of the Alabama and other vessels from British ports, and for the depredations committed by these vessels.”Description of the claims.

Upon these premises thus recited, and “in order to remove and adjust all complaints and claims on the part of the United States, and to provide for the speedy settlement of such claims,” the operative arrangement to that end proceeds in the definite statement that “the high contracting parties agree that all the said claims growing out of acts committed by the aforesaid vessels and generically known as the ‘Alabama claims,’ shall be referred to a tribunal of arbitration,” which this article of the treaty then proceeds to constitute.

II. The sixth article of the treaty imposes certain rules or principles, as the law, accepted by the concurrence of the high contracting parties, according to which the actual matters in difference between them are to be adjudicated by the tribunal; and, accordingly, it is provided that, “in deciding the matters submitted to the arbitrators, they shall be governed by the following three rules, which are agreed upon by the high contracting parties as rules to be taken as applicable to the case, and by such principles of international law, not inconsistent therewith, as the arbitrators shall determine to have been applicable to the case.” The article then proceeds to give the text of the rules, which it is not necessary here to repeat.The rules of the treaty.

The only further instruction in regard to the disposition of the matters submitted to arbitration, under the rules prescribed for their determination, is to be found in the seventh article of the treaty, in its provision that “the said tribunal shall first determine as to each vessel separately whether Great Britain has, by any act or omission, failed to fulfill any of the duties set forth in the foregoing three rules, or recognized by the principles of international law not inconsistent with such rules, and shall certify such fact as to each of the said vessels.”The provisions of Article VII.

Upon this principal determination by the tribunal, it is also provided, in Article VII, that, “in case the tribunal find that Great Britain has failed to fulfill any duty or duties as aforesaid, it may, if it think proper, proceed to award a sum in gross to be paid by Great Britain to the United States for all the claims referred to it,” and, in the tenth article, that, “in case the tribunal finds that Great Britain has failed to fulfill any duty or duties as aforesaid, and does not award a sum in gross, the high contracting parties agree that a board of assessors shall be appointed to ascertain and determine what claims are valid, and what amount or amounts shall be paid by Great Britain to the United States on account of the liability arising from such failure as to each vessel, according to the extent of such liability as decided by the arbitrators.”

The effect of the award that shall be made by the arbitrators under the authority conferred upon them by the treaty, is given by the ninth article, which provides that “the high contracting parties engage to consider the result of the proceedings of the tribunal of arbitration and of the board of assessors, should such board be appointed, as a full, perfect, and final settlement of all the claims hereinbefore referred to; and further engage that every such claim, whether the same may or may not have been presented to the notice of, made, preferred, or laid before the tribunal or board, shall, from and after the conclusion of the proceedings of the tribunal or board, be considered [Page 16] and treated as finally settled, barred, and henceforth inadmissible.”Effect of an award.

From these arrangements of the treaty, it is apparent:

(1.) That the high contracting parties have found, (in the public act of the government of Great Britain, expressing the regret of that government for certain occurrences in the past, and in the joint public act of the two governments, by which they agree to observe, “as between themselves in future,” the rules established as the law of this arbitration, “and to bring them to the knowledge of other maritime powers, and to invite them to accede to them,”) the means of reducing the measure of the complaint and demand for indemnity, insisted upon by the United States, and contested by Great Britain, before this tribunal, to all the claims of the United States “growing out of acts committed by” the described “vessels and generically known as the ‘Alabama claims.’”The measure of indemnity claimed.

(2.) That these claims are all preferred by the United States as a nation against Great Britain as a nation, and are to be so computed and paid, whether awarded as “a sum in gross,” under the seventh article of the treaty, or awarded for assessment of amounts, under the tenth article.The claims preferred are national.

(3.) That the authority of the tribunal is absolute and final between the two nations, and comprehensive of all the claims falling within the terms of the submission, “whether the same may or may not have been presented to the notice of, made, preferred, or laid before the tribunal or board of assessors.”The authority of the tribunal absolute for their determination.

(4.) That by force of this treaty, and the execution of the jurisdiction it confers upon this tribunal of arbitration, the controversy between the two nations, arising upon the conduct of Great Britain during the late rebellion in the United States, will find its final solution in the award of the arbitrators, and will be forever removed as an occasion of estrangement or disturbance of peace.Its award will be final.