Mr. Bernal Osborne, in a fierce onslaught on the Government
in Wednesday's debate, in which he accused them of gross bungling in relation to the Washington Treaty, and said it was a pity they did not send out a sharp attorney to draw it, instead of " digging out " a learned Professor of International Law from Oxford, positively regretted, or spoke as if he regret- ted, that we had not accepted the kind suggestion of the American Commissioners that we should confess ourselves in the wrong without arbitration, pay down £6,000,000 in a lump sum, and get rid of the matter there and then. Mr. Gladstone very properly replied that for ten years and more we had de- clared in answer to the American complaints, that we kept strictly neutral in the Civil War, and now Mr. Osborne proposes that we should say that all those declarations have been simply false, and " having no rag left to cover our disgrace," we offer damages of £6,000,000 sterling by Way of compensation, that the matter may be hushed up. Mr: Osborne can hardly have understood what he was talking about in making so monstrous a proposition. Probably he intended it only as a rhetorical thrust, but his weapon has run into his own hand.
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