23 MARCH 1872, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

TN answer to Lord Derby, last night, Lord Granville said some- ." thing of the position taken by the Government in replying to the American Note, and what he said seems to be in substantial harmony with the semi-official article in yesterday morning's Daily Telegraph, on which we have remarked elsewhere. It would seem that the Government have at last really taken up a position from which they are pledged not to recede, and that a limit has been formally put to the repeated and large concessions of the negotiation. Had it been otherwise, had Lord Granville given any hope that we would discuss the indirect claims at Geneva under any conditions whatever, we do not think the Government would have remained much longer in office. It is well to be good- tempered and not unyielding in small things, but it is not well to be pusillanimous, and still less to be forgetful of the great interests .of neutrals for whom we appear in this controversy with the United States. It seems that we shall put in our Counter-case im the 15th April,—the day appointed,—but on the explicit oanderstanding that it is with no prejudice to the full independ- ence of either party to take its own line with reference to the indirect claims. We only hope, as we have elsewhere said, that we shall not be guilty,—as the organ of the Government, the Daily Telegraph, seems to think we shall,—of the inconsistency and folly of discussing the indirect claims before a tribunal whose competency to pronounce upon them we altogether reject. We cannot do so "without prejudice,"—and great prejudice,—to our position ; just as no dying Protestant could ask for masses for his soul without prejudice,—and great prejudice,—to the sincerity of his Protestantism.