The assertion to which we adverted last week as certainly
untrue, that fresh and peremptory demands had been made on the British Government by that of President Johnson for the losses sustained through the Alabama, &c., which escaped from British ports, was at length disproved on Tuesday night in the House of Commons, by the perseverance of Mr. Shaw Lefevre and Mr. W. E. Forster. Yesterday week Lord Palmerston gave a very equivocal answer to Sir J. Walsh, which almost looked as if it were intended to excite rather than allay apprehensions. He said that further communica- tions from Mr. Adams on the subject had been received within the last few days, to which the British Government had not yet had time to reply, but that they were quite friendly in tone. The truth, however, was, as elicited on Tuesday, that Mr. Adams's recent " communication" was nothing but the delivery of a formal registra- tion of further losses coming under the same head as before, and not, as we understand, under any new order from Washington since the death of President Lincoln. Even on Tuesday Lord Palmer- ston seemed anxious to cover the fictitious information of The Owl, and it was only when Mr. Forster dragged up Mr. Layard that the truth finally appeared. Does Lord Palmerston perhaps him- self write for The Owl? He is obviously tender of its interests.
