Lord Granville's reply was suave and self-confident. He regretted Lord
Russell's tone, gave a short account of the origin of the Treaty, showing that while Great Britain proposed a joint Commission to consider reciprocally the claims of Canada and the United States on the fishing business, America had asked that the Alabama dispute should be referred to the same commission. Lord Granville defended the retrospective application of principles already adopted for the future in the Foreign Enlistment Amendment Act of last Session, on the ground that America, not being bound to us for the future, and this treaty binding her, to our own great gain, the concession on her part is worth far more than our agree- ment to be judged by the like principles in the Alabama case. Lord Granville might, we think, have put the case more strongly, as we have elsewhere shown. But he was as usual effective in his bland way, and snowed compliments on all sides.
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