No. 465.
Mr. Gorham to Mr. Fish.

No. 173.]

Sir: While the portion of the annual budget relating to foreign affairs was under discussion in the chamber of deputies a few days since, a motion was introduced by a prominent member of the “peace league,” pledging the government to the principle of arbitration for the adjustment of international misunderstandings, and to an effort to secure a clause in that sense whenever practicable in future treaties.

The motion was similar to the one voted by the English House of Commons last year at the instance of Mr. Richard, who, soon after the adjournment of Parliament, visited the continent, held public meetings at the Hague, Brussels, and many other places, assisted at some of them by David Dudley Field, of New York, for the purpose of explaining his views and providing for their dissemination. He was favorably noticed by the press, and his efforts appear to have made some impression on the law-makers of the Netherlands.

In support of the proposition, vivid pictures were drawn contrasting the horrors of war with the blessings of peace. War was represented as being irreligious, inhuman, and uncivilizing; Europe as supporting six millions of soldiers, at an annual cost of six and a half milliards; [Page 988] the public debt of Europe as having increased eighteen milliards during the past twenty-two years, of which 88 per cent. had been occasioned by war; two-fifths of the Netherlands’ annual budget for the maintenance of the national defense, and all, or nearly all, for the want of a proper understanding among the professedly Christian powers of the world respecting the adjustment of international troubles.

No expectation was entertained that a custom so long regarded by all nations as the only method of settling controversies arising from real or fancied injuries would immediately give place to the pacific policy under consideration; though it was less Utopian to look for it than it was formerly to expect liberty of conscience or the abolition of slavery. At any rate, the principle of arbitration having been indorsed by the United States, England, Italy, and Switzerland, its general recognition should be regarded only as a question of time.

Against the proposition, it was urged that it did not harmonize with the 1856 treaty of Paris; that Italy had but partially recognized it, having refused to adopt the principle of arbitration to conflicts unknown; that the Alabama case, so frequently referred to as an encouraging precedent by the advocates of the measure, was attended with innumerable difficulties and that the final result was anything but satisfactory to one of the parties concerned.

The minister of foreign affairs deprecated the readiness of governments to declare war, but had little faith in expedients to prevent it, adding that, since the treaty of Paris in 1856, there had been war in Italy, Denmark, Germany in 1866, and in France and Germany in 1870. The Netherlands’ being only a state of the second rank, he would be unwilling to take the initiative, but was ready to co-operate in all measures calculated to advance the interests of humanity.

A vote being called for, the motion prevailed by 35 against 20. The budget was then voted unanimously.

I am, &c.,

CHARLES T. GORHAM.