territory. Three of these are stated to have been captured, armed, and employed as tenders by the officer commanding the Florida during the cruise of that vessel, and one by the commander of the Alabama. Of two others, the Sumter and Nashville, it is alleged only that they received hospitalities in British ports, while cruising as ships of war of the Confederate States; of two more, the Tallahassee and Chickamauga, that, having been originally built in England, and employed in carrying cargo to and from ports of the Confederate States, they were con verted into cruisers by the confederate government; and of the ninth, the Retribution, that her commander contrived on two occasions to carry a prize captured by him on the high seas into the territorial waters of an island belonging to Her Majesty's dominions, and there to dispose of or destroy the cargo.

[2] *As to all of these nine vessels, but more especially as to five of them, it might justly be maintained that they ought not to be reckoned among the vessels which have given rise to the claims generically known as the Alabama claims, and that no complaints in respect of them ought to be considered or received by the arbitrators. Her Britannic Majesty's government, however, has not thought proper to raise this objection. It contents itself with directing the attention of the tribunal to the fact that neither in the course of the war nor dur ing the long period which has elapsed since its conclusion have any claims whatever been made upon Great Britain by the United States on account of any of these vessels.

There have been further introduced into the list of claims losses for captures by two vessels, named the Boston and Sallie, which are not mentioned in the Case, and expenses said to have been incurred in the pursuit of a third, (the Chesapeake,) as to which the Case is equally silent. Her Majesty's government presumes that this has been done through inadvertence. No award can be made which shall comprehend or take into account the acts of vessels as to which the United States have not even alleged any failure of duty.

of the evidence ad.

States.

GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE EVIDENCE.

It would be superfluous to remind the tribunal that the conclusions General character at which it will arrive must of necessity be formed, not duced by the United upon what the Government of the United States may allege, but upon what it shall be able to prove. Nor can it be necessary to point out that, while it is not the duty of the tribunal to apply to the evidence produced on either side rules drawn from the law or methods of procedure established in any particular state, the credibility and value of that evidence must nevertheless be tried by those general principles of reason and justice which are applicable to all testimony, in whatever forum it may be offered, for whatever purpose, or under whatever circumstances. But it may be convenient that the attention of the arbitrators should at the outset be directed to the character of some portions of the evidence on which the United States rely.

Much of the evidence adduced on behalf of the United States has been also laid before the arbitrators by Great Britain, either as supporting the case of Her Britannic Majesty's government, or as forming part of the official correspondence and other materials of which it was proper that the arbitrators should be in possession before proceeding to adjudicate on the matters referred to them. Much, therefore, of the evidence on each side is common to both, though the two parties differ in the use which they respectively make of it.

Among the other documentary evidence cited or referred to in the Case of the United States are reports and dispatches from consuls or consular officers of the United States, who were during the war, or have since been, resident in ports within Her Majesty's dominions. Of these persons it may be assumed that they were gentlemen worthy of credit when relating anything within the range of their personal knowledge. As to statements made by them on the authority of others the credit to be attached to these must depend in every case on the knowledge and veracity of the informant, not on those of the reporter of the information. Statements made on the ground of alleged notoriety or public rumor are evidence only-and that of a very vague and unsatisfactory kind, since little reliance can be placed on assertions which, from their very nature, there can be no means of testing-that a number, greater or less, of persons who are themselves unknown, and whose credibility and means of information are likewise unknown, believe, or have reported, a supposed fact to be true. It should be added that these officers were, as was natural, zealous-sometimes to indiscretion—in the cause of their Government; that they shared to the full, with their countrymen at home, in the excited and irritable feelings which are generated by civil war, and were, like their Government, firmly impressed with the erroneous idea that all armed vessels of the Confederate States ought, in foreign ports, to be regarded and treated as piratical. The admission of a confederate ship on the same terms as a United States ship was by itself, in their view, an offense against the United States; and this error led them into many misconceptions and colored throughout the reports which they addressed to their Government.

The Government of the United States has appended to its Case, and has frequently referred to and invoked as evidence against Great Britain, a mass of confederate papers, the greater part of which consists of correspondence said to have passed between persons who were hired and employed during the war for various purposes by the confederate government and officials of that government, while the rest is of a private and still less authentic char

acter. Most of these papers are said to have been "captured 3) *at the taking of Richmond, and at other times;" and they, or

such portions of them as the Government of the United States has thought fit to make public, are now made known to Her Britannic Majesty's Government for the first time. Of the authenticity of them and of the manner in which they came into the possession of the Government of the United States, Her Britannic Majesty's government has no knowledge whatever beyond that which it derives from the above-mentioned statement, which it willingly accepts as true. Of the persons by whom and the circumstances under which the letters were written, and of the character and credibility of the writers, it knows nothing whatever. They are persons with whom this government had nothing to do and whose very existence was unknown to it; and it does not admit as evidence against Great Britain any statements which they may have made to those who employed them or to one another.

Some notice must here be taken of the use which has been made, in the Case of the United States, of opinions recently expressed by one or two living writers respecting the matters referred to the tribunal. One of these (Dr. Blüntschli) is a jurist of celebrity, who, in the short paper written by him on the subject, has with great propriety guarded himelf against being supposed to pronounce any decisive opinion, frankly admitting the inadequacy of his information, which, indeed, he appears to have derived entirely from a speech delivered in the Senate of the

United States. On this point, however, Her Britannic Majesty's government has but one remark to make. Whatever qualifications these writers might be found to possess for forming a judgment on the question, if they had been acquainted with the facts-a matter on which Her Majesty's government has no opinion to express-they are not the persons selected as arbitrators in this case. The eminent persons who have been so selected will form their conclusions under the definite sense of responsibility proper to a high and regularly constituted judicial tribunal, after hearing both sides, and upon a full and complete knowledge, such as no man can possibly have possessed before, of all the facts of the case; and Her Britannic Majesty's government is well assured that they will feel it to be, as it is, their first duty to form those conclusions for themselves, upon the facts and arguments brought before them, absolutely uninfluenced by any opinions which any writer, be he who he may, has permitted himself to express, whether on one side or on the other.

It is well known to the arbitrators that when, on former occasions recorded in history, jurists have undertaken to determine the merits of international questions actually in controversy, the judgments so pronounced have been held questionable, as open to the suspicion of parti sanship, and have in fact been often influenced by a bias, the precise causes of which it might be difficult to ascertain. This alone is sufficient reason why weight should not be assigned to opinions put forward post litem motam.

PART II.-Argu

States on neutral du

In Part III of the Case of the United States an endeavor has been made to furnish the arbitrators with a definition of the duties which Great Britain, as a neutral power, was bound to ment of the United observe toward the United States during the war. At the ties. close of an elaborate dissertation on this subject, the Government of the United States sums up the conclusions which it conceives Propositions af itself to have established, in the form of twelve proposi-firmed the United tions. These propositions it regards as governing the questions involved in the claims which it submits to the arbitrators.

States.

Her Majesty's government believes that it will adopt the course most convenient to the tribunal, by explaining at once and in the first place how far it assents to the propositions laid down by the United States and how far it dissents from them; examining afterward, so far as may be necessary, the grounds on which the conclusions of the United States are formed, and stating its own conclusions on such points as appear to be in dispute.

The propositions advanced on the part of the United States are the following:

"1. That it is the duty of a neutral to preserve strict and impartial neutrality as to both belligerents during hostilties."

The British government willingly assents to this proposition. No one, indeed, has yet been found to deny that it is the duty of a neutral power to be neutral; or that neutrality is, by its very definition, a condition of impartiality in matters relating to the war; or to affirm that it is possible to be neutral as to one of two belligerents without being neutral as to the other.

2. That this obligation is independent of municipal law." The British government accepts this proposition also.

"3. That a neutral is bound to enforce its municipal laws and its executive proclamation, and that a belligerent has the right to ask it to do so, and also the right to ask to have the powers conferred upon the neutral by law increased, if found insufficient."

The British government does not dispute that a belligerent government may, if it think fit, ask for any of these things. But that a neutral power is under an international obligation to comply with the request, or to enforce its municipal laws and all proclamations or orders issued by the executive government, is far from being universally true; tis admissible only under very material qualifications, which will be

Case of the United States, pp. 210 et seq.

presently stated. Still less can it be admitted to be generally true that a belligerent power has a right to call upon the neutral state to make changes in its domestic legislation.

"4. That a neutral is bound to use due diligence to prevent the fitting out, arming, or equipping within its jurisdiction of any vessel which it has reasonable ground to believe is intended to cruise or carry on war against a power with which it is at peace.

"5. That a neutral is bound to use like diligence to prevent the construction of such a vessel.

"6. That a neutral is bound to use like diligence to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise or carry on war against any power with which it is at peace, such vessel having been specially adapted, in whole or in part, within its jurisdiction, to warlike use.

"7. That a neutral may not permit or suffer either belligerent to make use of its ports or waters as the base of naval operations against the other.

"8. That a neutral is bound to use due diligence in its ports or waters to prevent either belligerent from obtaining there a renewal or augmentation of military supplies, or arms for belligerent vessels, or the recruitment of men."

Great Britain adheres to the three rules inserted in Article VI [6] of the treaty of *Washington, and accepts them in the words in which they are there expressed, while it considers those rules as exceeding in some material respects the obligations which, independ ently of them, could have been established by international law against a neutral power free from all engagements on the subject, direct or indirect, with a belligerent. The British government is willing to discuss the construction of these rules, but declines to admit any deviation from or enlargement of them. The statement that a neutral government "is bound to use like diligence to prevent the construction of such a vessel” appears to Her Majesty's government to be such a deviation or enlarge ment. It is, in fact, a simple interpolation. Nor can the propositions numbered 7 and 8 be accepted as a correct representation of the second and third rules.

"9. That when a neutral fails to use all the means in its power to prevent a breach of the neutrality of its soil or waters, in any of the foregoing respects, the neutral should make compensation for the injury resulting therefrom."

The British government does not admit this proposition as it stands. but it agrees that, where an appreciable injury has been directly caused by a violation of a clearly-ascertained international duty, suitable repa ration ought to be made to the injured party.

"10. That this obligation is not discharged or arrested by the change of the offending vessel into a public man-of-war.

"11. That this obligation is not discharged by a fraudulent attempt of the offending vessel to evade the provisions of a local municipal law. "12. That the offense will not be deposited so as to release the liability of the neutral even by the entry of the offending vessel in a port of the belligerent, and there becoming a man-of-war, if any part of the original fraud continues to hang about the vessel.

Her Majesty's government must observe, with all respect for the Government of the United States, that it can neither admit nor deny propositions to which it finds itself unable to attach a distinct meaning. It is not for the British government to contend that any obligation, either of a government or of an individual, which has not been fulfilled