Tab LAST ALABAMA SUGGESTION.
A. SUGGESTION has come from the very well-informed and usually accurate correspondent of the Daily News in the United States which, if it be founded on authentic information, opens up some hope that the Treaty of Washing- ton may not even now be allowed to drop. The telegram to which we refer is as follows :—" New York, February 15.—A member of the Cabinet tells me that the answer to Lord Granville's note will assume that the Arbitrators must settle everything, or the United States will refuse to negotiate further. If the claims are referred to a Board of Assessors, under Article 10, the demand for Indirect damages will be dropped." Now, there is no doubt considerable difficulty in interpreting the real drift of that communication, but the main feature of it is very encouraging,—implying, as it does, that the United States are willing to admit that our English interpretation of the 10th Article of the Treaty, under which the Board of Assessors is constituted, is correct, and that if the provisions of that article be put in force, the indirect claims cannot be taken into account. Now the main stress of the English argu- ment, so far as it is derived from the Treaty itself and not from the Protocols, has always rested on this Tenth Article. We have urged persistently that under that Article the Board of Assessors is bound to fasten on each cruiser considered by the Arbitrators to have illegally escaped from our ports its particular share of the mischief and loss caused to America, and that no provision whatever is made for any general assess- ment of damages which could not be thus individualized. We have maintained, with unanswerable force, as we believe, that under this article of the Treaty it would be impossible to urge the indirect claims for prolongation of the war, inasmuch as no earthly Board of Assessors could pretend to say how much prolongation of the war, for instance, was due to the Alabama and how mach to the Shenandoah. And now it would appear, if the Daily News' correspondent may be trusted, that the American Government agrees with us on this point,—that under the 10th Article of the Treaty, if that should ever come into force, indirect claims are not to be urged.
But the " Case " of the United States is surely materially embarrassed by such an admission. Is it credible that they can maintain that they have a right to urge the indirect claims under the Seventh Article, and no right to urge them under the Tenth I Remember that the seventh article is that which gives power to the Arbitrators at Geneva to settle the whole matter by awarding a lump sum as indemnity after hearing the case on each side, and that this is the solution which the Ameri- can statesmen urge as the fairest to them and simplest in itself. Now is it credible that they should take power to ask for a much more considerable indemnity in case the Arbitrators adopt a course which they admit that they prefer, and which saves them an immense deal of argument, discussion, and expense, than they could ask for if the other course less agreeable to them, and putting them to much more expense, should be taken Is it easy to conceive that any Power would hold out to its antagonist the strongest possible induce- ment to promote the course which it disliked, and to resist the course which it preferred ? Yet this is precisely how it would be if England has been given the strongest possible motive to urge on the Arbitrators to resort to the Tenth Article of the Treaty, instead of to take an award under the Seventh Article. For such a strong motive we should of course actually have, if under the tenth article the indirect claims be excluded, and under the seventh article they are admissible. Still the admission, if it has been really made, that the Board of Assessors, if ever appointed, would not be asked to consider the Indirect claims, is of immense importance. It would show that the United States and England are agreed at least on the interpretation of the Tenth Article of the Treaty,—the second alternative for adjudicating on these claims. This would, we consider, lend an immense force to our argument. We should have a very strong case in maintaining that claims confessedly excluded under the second alternative proposed by the Treaty could hardly have been included under the first. But in any case it would open out a new hope of a successful negotiation. If the United States are so far agreed with us as to think that the Board of Asses- sors could not be asked to adjudicate on the indirect claims, it becomes pretty clear that the indirect claims can only have been intended as a mode of asking the Arbitrators to interpret the direct claims in their fullest rather than in their weakest sense ; and if once we could get that put fairly in writing, we do not see why the Treaty might not go on.
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