NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Geneva Judgment finds us guilty of negligence as regards three vessels, the Alabama, the Florida (not the Georgia, as was rumoured), and the Shenandoah, and condemns us to pay 15,500,000 dole. (£3,229,000) for their ravages. The principles laid down are not exactly pleasant to us, but they are very moderate, wise, and practicable. The judgment does not touch any vessel which was not absolutely and demonstrably intended for war, and built in our ports, except the Shenandoah, and that not at all on account of its issuing originally from an English port,— for which we are expressly exonerated from all responsibility,—but because a British colony reinforced her crew in Melbourne after she bad already borne the Confederate flag. Hence the judgment does slot imperil in any way the neutral's right to build ordinary com- mercial vessels in time of war, even though they be intended and afterwards used for warlike purposes. Again, the Tribunal dis- allowed the demand of the American agent for the expenses of the United States Navy in pursuing the escaped cruisers, holding very wisely that it could not be distinguished from the general coat of the war. What was practically decided will probably come to this,—that neutral States must not allow war-vessels to be built in their ports at all in time of war, or at least must not let them issue from their ports ; and that if they do, they will become at once responsible for any damages the cruisers com- mit, and will have the right to seize and detain them whenever and wherever they again come within the same neutral's juris- diction. That is admirable sense, and a very intelligible rule for the future, though it may bear a little hardly as an ex post facto principle on England, whose authorities really seem to have thought that to seize the escaped vessels after they had obtained the Confederate commission would have been an act of gross partiality, and a flagrant injustice to the Confederates. We have discussed this, the main principle of the judgment, elsewhere.
