Views of Mr. Adams.

It would seem from some of Mr. Adams's expressions that he did not concur in these views of his colleagues. While regretting that he did not do so, because the views seem to me to be in accordance with the facts, and also in accordance with general principles which all maritime powers would desire to maintain, I must bear testimony to the perfect and dignified impartiality with which, not only in this respect, but throughout the proceedings, Mr. Adams maintained his position as a judge between the two contending nations. Of him, at least, it may be said that his love of country never controlled his sense of justice, and that at no time did he appear as an advocate.

His impartiality.

3. DUTY TO DETAIN AN OFFENDING CRUISER WHEN IT COMES AGAIN WITHIN THE NEUTRAL'S JURISDICTION, AND EFFECT OF A COMMISSION UPON SUCH CRUISER.

Effect of a mission.

Position of United States.

com

the

It was maintained in the American Case that, by the true construction of the second clause of the first rule of the treaty, when a vessel like the Florida, Alabama, Georgia, or Shenandoah, which has been especially adapted within a neutral port for the use of a belligerent in war, comes again within the neutral's jurisdiction, it is the duty of the neutral to seize and detain it. This construction was denied by Great Britain. It was maintained in the British papers submitted to the tribunal, that the obligation created by this clause refers only to the duty of preventing the original departure of the vessel, and that the fact that the vessel was, after the original departure from the neutral port, commissioned as a ship of war protects it against detention.

British position.

To this point we rejoined that a commission is no protection against seizure in such case, and does not operate to release the neutral from the obligation to detain the offender.

American rejouder.

Views of Viscount d'Itajuba.

The Viscount d'Itajuba seemed to favor the American construction. He said:

According to the latter part of the first rule of Article VI of the Treaty of Washington, the neutral is bound also to use due diligence to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise or carry on war as above, [viz, against a belligerent,] such vessel having been specially adapted, in whole or in part, within its jurisdiction to warlike use. If, then, a vessel built on neutral territory for the use of a belligerent, fraudulently and without the knowledge of the neutral, comes again within the jurisdiction of the sovereign whose neutrality it has violated, it ought to be seized and detained.

Count Sclopis says, on this point:

*

It is on the nature of these special circumstances that the first rule laid down in Article VI of the Treaty of Washington specifically rests. The operation of that rule would be illusory, if it could not be applied to vessels subsequently commissioned. The object in view is to prevent the construction, arming, and equipping of the vessel, and to prevent her departure when there is sufficient reason to believe that she is intended to carry on war on behalf of one of the belligerents; and when probability has become certainty, shall not the rule be applicable to the direct and palpable consequences which it originally was intended to prevent?

In the award the Tribunal says that

tribunal.

The effects of a violation of neutrality committed by means of the construction, equipment and armament of a vessel are not done away with by any Decision of the commission which the government of the belligerent power, benefited by the violation of neutrality, may afterward have granted to that vessel; and the ultimate step by which the offense is completed cannot be admissible as a ground for the absolution of the offender, nor cau the consummation of his fraud become the means of establishing his innocence. The privilege of exterritorality, ac

corded to vessels of war, has been admitted into the law of nations, not as an absolute right, but solely as a proceeding founded on the principles of courtesy and mutual deference between different nations, and therefore can never be appealed to for the protection of acts done in violation of neutrality.

It will be observed that the Tribunal, instead of adopting the recognition by the Viscount d'Itajuba of a positive obligation on the part of the neutral to detain the vessel, in the case supposed, limited itself to expressing the opinion that, in such case, the neutral would have the right to make such detention.

4. SUPPLIES OF COAL.

United States.

the

It was maintained in the American Case that the proofs showed that the insurgent cruisers were permitted to supply themselves with Supplies of coal. coal in British ports in greater quantities and with greater Position of freedom, and with less restrictions than were imposed upon the United States; and it was insisted that, in consequence of these facts, there was an absence of neutrality, which made those ports bases of hostile operations against the United States under the second rule of the treaty.

On this point the award says that—

In order to impart to any supplies of coal a character inconsistent with the second rule, prohibiting the use of neutral ports or waters, as a base of naval Decision of the operations for a belligerent, it is necessary that the said supplies should be connected with special circumstances of time, of persous, or of place, which may combine to give them such character.

tribunal.

It does not appear by the terms of the award that Great Britain is held responsible for the acts of any vessel solely in consequence of illegal supplies of coal. The question is, therefore, a speculative one, so far as relates to this controversy. The opinions of the four arbitrators who signed the award furnish, however, the explanation of what they mean when they speak of "special circumstances of time, of persons, or of place."

Mr. Adams says:

Views of Mr.

I perceive no other way to determine the degree of responsibility of a neutral in these cases, than by an examination of the evidence to show the intent of the grant in any specific case. Fraud or falsehood in such a case poisons Adatus. everything it touches. Even indifference may degenerate into willful negligence, and that will impose a burden of proof to relieve it before responsibility can be relieved.

Count Sclopis says:

Views of Count Sclopis

I will not say that the simple fact of having allowed a greater amount of coal than was necessary to enable a vessel to reach the nearest port of its country constitutes in itself a sufficient grievance to call for an indemnity. As the lord chancellor of England said on the 12th of June, 1871, in the House of Lords, England and the United States equally hold the principle that it is no violation of the law of nations to furnish arms to a belligerent. But if an excessive supply of coal is connected with other circumstances which show that it was used as a veritable res hostilis, then there is an infraction of the second article of the treaty. Thus, for example, when I see the Florida and the Shenandoah choose for their fields of action, the one the stretch of sea between the Bahama archipelago and Bermuda, to cruise there at its ease, and the other Melbourne and Hobson's Bay, for the purpose immediately carried out, of going to the Arctic Seas, there to attack the whaling vessels, I cannot but regard the supplies of coal in quantities sufficient for such services, infractions of the second rule of Article VI.

Mr. Stämpfli says of the Sumter :

* *

The permission given to the Sumter to remain and to take in coal at Trinidad does not of itself constitute a sufficient basis for accusing the British authorities of having failed in their duties as neutrals, because the fact cannot be considered by itself, since the Sumter both before and after that

Views of Mr. Stampfl..

time was admitted into the ports of many other States where it staid and took in coal so that it cannot be held that the port of Trinidad served as a base

*

of operations.

But of the Shenandoah he says:

A supply of coal was not a necessary condition of neutral asylum, and in supplying her with so large a quantity of coal, the capacity of the ship for making war was increased just as much as by the recruitment of her crew which took place.

Views of Viscount d'Itajuba.

The Viscount d'Itajuba, at the thirty-first conference, while signing the decision, remarked with regard to the recital concerning the supply of coals, that he is of the opinion that every government is free to furnish to the belligerents more or less of that article.

Municipal laws of

5. THE MUNICIPAL LAWS OF ENGLAND.

It was maintained in the American Case that the liability of Great Bri tain should be measured by the rules of international law; and England cannot be that it could not be escaped by reason of any alleged deficiencies in any internal legislation enacted for the purpose of enabling the government to fulfill its international duties.

set up in justification,

The pleadings and arguments on the part of Great Britain are filled with denials of this proposition in every possible way, from the opening Case to the last supplemental argument of Sir Roundell Palmer.

The award says, "the government of Her Britannic Majesty cannot justify itself for a failure in due diligence on the insufficiency of the legal means of action which it possessed."

The tribunal pass upon the Nashville, &c., not

6. THE SUMTER, THE NASHVILLE, &C.

It was maintained in the American Case that, under the terms of the treaty of Washington the parties had agreed to submit to Sumter, the decision of the tribunal of arbitration, not only the withstanding British claims growing out of the acts of the Florida, the Alabama, objections. the Georgia, and the Shenandoah, which originally proceeded from ports of Great Britain, but also all claims growing out of the acts of other cruisers, such as the Nashville, the Sumter, &c., which could in any way be shown to have used British ports as bases of supplies. The British Case and Counter Case strenuously contended that the submission was limited to the four vessels first above named. The tribunal unanimously, including Sir Alexander Cockburn, took no notice of this claim of Great Britain, and considered all the claims presented and decided them upon their merits.

Sir A. Cockburn's 7. THE DISSENTING OPINION OF SIR A. COCKBURN.

dissenting opinion.

He is the repre

The frankness with which Sir Alexander Cockburn confesses in this opinion that he sat on the Tribunal, not as a judge, but as, Bentative of Great in some sense the representative of Great Britain," one of the parties to the controversy, places before the world the knowledge of a fact of which, otherwise, it would have been better to take no public notice.

Britain.

His charges against

The chief justice calls legal propositions made by General Cushing, Mr. Evarts, and Mr. Waite, over their signatures and under the the American coun- responsibility of counsel, "strange misrepresentations," and "assertions without the shadow of a foundation." He says that "their imaginations must have been lively, while their consciences slept." He finds in a portion of their argument "an extraordinary series of propositions," and "the most singular confusion of ideas, misrepre

sentations of facts, and ignorance both of law and history, which were, perhaps, ever crowded into the same space." He calls the part of their argument on which he was commenting, "an affront offered to this tribunal, by such an attempt to practice on our supposed credulity or ignorance," and says that he "is at a loss to understand how counsel, familiar with English law, can take upon themselves to make statements of this sort."

They need no vin

No opportunity of

charges.

I need not assume in the United States to vindicate the accuracy of statements or the soundness of reasonings which have the guarantee of the names of our distinguished counsel. The dication. charges are sanctioned by the chief justice alone. I have no hesitation in expressing my conviction that they would have been indignantly repudiated by each and all of his colleagues had fered to consider the the paper in which they are made been publicly read, or had its contents been made known at the time when the Tribunal ordered it to be recorded. This voluminous paper was, in fact, not read in the Tribunal; its author presented it in bulk without any statement respecting its character; no one had any reason to imagine its contents; and it was not made public until several days after the dissolution of the Tribunal and the separation of its members. As Sir Alexander Cockburn says of the charges of unfriendliness which were made in the American Case against members of Lord Palmerston's cabinet, "The world must judge between the accusers and accused."

He charges

the

The British arbitrator also charges that the Case of the United States "pours forth the pent-up venom of national and personal hate." He speaks of the "abuse" it "freely bestows," and case with abuse and complains of the "hostile and insulting tone thus offensively and unnecessarily adopted toward Great Britain, her statesmen, and her institutions."

hostility.

These charges appear to be founded upon the proof of the desire of various members of the British government for the success

The reason for

of the insurgents in the South, taken from the mouths of those charges, the speakers and presented for the consideration of the Tribunal, and upon the legitimate application which was made of that proof in the issue respecting "due diligence" which was pending before the tribunal at Geneva.

the American case

A complete vindication of the line of argument in the Case (if any were needed) could be drawn from Sir Alexander Cock- The justice of the burn's paper. "There can be no doubt," he says, "that line of argument in these speeches not only expressed the sentiments of the admitted. speakers, but may be taken to be the exponent of the sentiments generally entertained at that time;" and he adds, "though partiality does not necessarily lead to want of diligence, yet it is apt to do so, and in case of doubt would turn the scale." With such an admission as this, it is surprising that a man of the robust sense of the chief justice should have reproduced the rash imputations of the British press.

That I charged individual members of Lord Palmerston's cabinet with a partiality for the insurgents, is true; equally true is it that I supported the charge by proof from their own lips.

But I never questioned their right to entertain such partiality, or to express it in any manner that suited them. I never even assumed to criticise its justice before a tribunal created to try other issues. I confined myself strictly to the issues before that body, and I argued that this partiality of individual members of the government would be apt to lead to want of diligence, and in case of doubt would turn the scalea line of argument which is now admitted to be just.

Lord Russell ustifies it.

If I argued that these acts of individual members of the British government were inconsistent with the "due diligence" required by the treaty, I did only what Lord Russell had said to Mr. Adams must be the inevitable result of an arbitration. "Have the British government acted with due diligence, or, in other words, with good faith and honesty?" was the question by which he said the liability of England was to be determined.

If I urged that, in any instance, the neutrality of Great Britain was not sincere, I did but pursue the line of argument which Lord Westbury had defended in advance in the House of Lords, and I did it nearly in his own language.

Lord Westbury justifies it.

I find no fault that Sir Alexander Cockburn does not agree with me, and with most of the world outside of England, as to the force of the evidence which was presented respecting these points. That is a subject on which persons may honestly differ. But I must be permitted to express some surprise that a lawyer of his deservedly great reputation should have made such a disagreement the cause of totally unfounded allegations against the Case of the United States and its author.

With the exception of these personal remarks, this long dissenting opinion (twice the length of the American case) adds little or nothing new to the arguments previously put forth by Great Britain in vindication of her course toward the United States. There are several material errors in its statements of facts, but I shall not follow its example of injustice in attributing them to design. All right-thinking persons will heartily echo the wish with which the paper closes, "that in the time to come no sense of past wrong unredressed will stand in the way of the friendly and harmonious relations which should subsist between two great and kindred nations."

tion of the policy of arbitration.

Thus, surrounded by difficulties, which at one time seemed insuperable, Conclusion. this great cause has reached its conclusion. Nations have, ere now, consented to adjust by arbitration questions of figures and The results of the questions of boundaries; but the world has had few, if any, tribunal indica earlier examples of the voluntary submission to arbitration of a question in which a deep-seated conviction of injuries and wrongs which no possible award could compensate, animated a whole nation. It is out of such sentiments and feelings that wars come. The United States elected the path of peace. Confident of receiving justice, they laid the story of their wrongs before an impartial tribunal. This story, so grievous in its simple truthfulness, threatened for a time to break up the peaceful settlement which the parties had promised each other to make. Notwithstanding all obstacles, however, the great experiment has been carried to a successful end; and hereafter it cannot be denied that questions involving national sentiment may be decided by arbitration, as well as questions of figures.

The commander who had been permitted, by Providence, to guide some of the greatest military events in history, has thus, in civil life, assisted in presenting to the nations of the world the most conspicuous example of the settlement of international disputes by peaceful arbitration.

It is within my personal knowledge that your own counsels have also had a large share in shaping this great result.

I have, &c.,

Hon. HAMILTON FISH,

Secretary of State.

J. C. BANCROFT DAVIS.