Mr. Reverdy Johnson, formerly Minister of the United States in
London, has published a letter to a member of the House of Representatives, Mr. Peters, in which he strongly maintains that the Indirect Claims form no part of the Treaty of Washington, and that it is within the discretion of the President to withdraw them. His legal duty, says Mr. Johnson, is to construe the Treaty so as to carry it out, not to construe it so that it is certain to be nullified, more especially as its real object was to remove all causes of difference between the two peoples. Mr. Johnson also argues that as the American Government is now the trustee for the individual claimants whose rights are to be submitted to arbitration, it is violating that trust when it presses demands of its own which no reflecting person thinks can km obtained. That is rather a commercial view of the Treaty, but it is one which will not be without its influence on the Senate.
