Mr. G. W. Smalley, the very able correspondent of the
New York Tribune, has written two letters to the Times to show that in the United States, directly after the conclusion of the Treaty, the statesmen there were as confident and as unanimous that the Treaty included the submission of the indirect claims as our statesmen ever were that it excluded them. His evidence, so far as it goes, is quite conclusive, and shows that the President, Mr. Caleb Cashing, Mr. Adams, and Mr. Sumner all certainly held this view, if Mr. Smalley's memory does not fail him. He does not, however, mention Mr. Fish, the principal in the negotiation. All we can say is that, this being so, it was hardly decent for the American Government not to call our statesmen's attention to the delusion under which they were labouring when the debate of the 12th June got out to America. That debate was freely used in the preparation of the American Case, and cannot therefore possibly have escaped the eye of the American statesmen. Can they point to any public expressions of American official opinion to which our statesmen have been equally blind? . Mr. Otway has stated that the draft Treaty was never submitted to the Law Officers of the Crown, as he had supposed that it would be ; but Sir Stafford Northcote says, in a letter to the Globe (in defence of his colleague the Marquis of Ripon), that our own negotiators have a complete answer to the charge of loose work in the drafting of the Treaty, which, how- ever, it is not at present expedient to produce. It is clear that we do not yet know the full strength of our own case.
