after the report of the law-officers, which was only received on the 29th and if it had been so, the British government could never be held responsible for the treachery of some unknown subordinate, who may have become informed of their decision, or may have anticipated that it would be made.

Her Majesty's government maintains that claims in respect of the Alabama must be supported, if at all, solely and entirely by a clearly ascertained failure of duty, for which the government itself can justly be held responsible, and that the failure of duty must be such as can with propriety be made the subject of a serious international complaint. To found a complaint or claim, wholly or in part, on the asserted fact that government would not act against persons or property within its dominions without "strict technical evidence," either means nothing or means that the rules which civilized states have found necessary in the domestic administration of justice, for the protection of private rights and of persons wrongfully accused, are to be set aside in cases of international controversy. International law would then become a pretext not only for interfering with the internal arrangements of different countries in matter of legal procedure, but for drawing back society to the use of those less safe means for the enforcement of rights which, in the course of its progress, it has found reason to exchange for other and more equitable means.

To found a charge of neglect on the lapse of so short an interval as occurred in the case of the Alabama between the production of evidence and the decision that it was sufficient to act upon, is to lay down an impracticable standard of human conduct. It is a demand that the conduct of a government with its various departments, with modes of action which are of necessity methodical, and more or less complex, shall proceed with a mechanical precision which is not applicable to the practical business of life. Where nice considerations of right, as between parties having opposite interests, have to be weighed, the application of such a principle is palpably unreasonable; yet on what other principle can it be maintained that the time taken between Friday, the 25th, and Tuesday, the 29th July, for the joint action of the foreign office and the law-officers was so plainly excessive that it may justly be made a ground for formal condemnation? Does it not rather carry with it presumptive evidence of good faith?

As to the subsequent arming of this vessel in the waters of the Azores, Her Majesty's goverment is content to refer the arbitrators to the statements contained in the British Case. They are told, indeed, in the Case of the United States, that she was "armed within British jurisdiction," which is explained as meaning that the armament intended for her was sent from the same port as the ship herself. It is added that "the British authorities had such ample notice that they must be assumed to have known all the facts." If by this it be meant that the government or its officers had any notice of the dispatch of the Alabama's armament, the fact is otherwise; if the meaning be that, because they knew of the building of the ship, they must be assumed to have known the arrangements for arming her, (of which they, as well as the minister and consul of the United States, were, in fact, totally ignorant,) this, to say the least, would be a presumption of a very strange and unusual kind.

As to this point, it is enough to repeat here what was said in the Case of Great Britain. The Alabama sailed from England wholly unarmed, and with a crew hired to work the ship, and not enlisted for the confederate service. She received her armament at a distance of more

than 1,000 miles from England, and was armed for war, not within the Queen's dominions, but either in Portuguese waters or on the high seas. The guns and ammunition, which were put on board of her off Terceira, had been procured and exported from England in an ordinary merchantsteamer, which loaded them as cargo, and sailed with a regular clearance for Nassau. The clearance and departure of this steamer presented, so far as Her Majesty's government is aware, no circumstance distinguishing her from ordinary blockade-runners. No information was ever given or representation made to the government as to this ship or her cargo before she left British waters; nor does it appear that the errand on which she was employed was known to or suspected by the officials of the United States. But, even had a suspicion existed that her cargo was exported with the intention that it should be used, either in the Confederate States or elsewhere, in arming a vessel which had been unlawfully fitted in England for warlike employment, [88] this would not *have made it the duty of the officers of customs to detain her or have empowered them to do so. Such a transaction is not a breach of English law, nor is it one which the British government was under any obligation to prevent. Whether the cargo was sent from the same port as the ship or from a different port, and by the same or different persons, is manifestly immaterial for this purpose. The distinction is plainly not such as to create in the one case a duty which would not arise in the other.

The Alabama was commissioned by the government of the Confederate States and officered by American citizens. Of the crew a considerable number were British subjects, who were induced by persuasion and promises of reward to take service in her when she was off Terceira. Others were American citizens, and the proportion which these bore to the rest increased during her cruise.

Her Majesty's government refrains, in the case of this vessel, as in that of the Florida, from pursuing in this place the complaints made respecting the subsequent admission of her into some of the colonial ports of Great Britain. It is said, indeed, in the Case of the United States, that Earl Russell promised Mr. Adams to send orders to Jamaica (which she visited in January, 1862) to detain her for a violation of British sovereignty, and that this promise was not kept; and that "Great Britain did not, as Earl Russell had promised, send out orders for her detention," is one of the grounds on which the United States ask an award against this country. Earl Russell gave no such promise. In a conversation with Mr. Adams, immediately after she left Liverpool, and at a time when her immediate destination was unknown, he is stated to have told the latter that he "should send directions to have her stopped, if she went, as was probable, to Nassau." Orders to this effect were, in fact, sent. But the contingency contemplated as probable did not occur; the ship, as has been seen, did not go to Nassau, but to Terceira; and when she first appeared in British waters she was a commissioned ship of war, and had been received as such in a French port, as she afterward was (notwithstanding the remonstrances of the United States) in ports of Brazil. It was not the duty of the British government or of any other neutral power to cause her to be seized and detained when she entered its ports in that character. She was received there under precisely the same conditions as vessels of war of the United States, and the imputation of partiality which is cast, in the Case of the United States, on the governor of the Cape Colony, is entirely devoid of foundation. Nor is it necessary to enter into the complaints laid before Her Majesty's government by Mr. Adams respecting

acts done by the commander of the Alabama on the high seas. Mr. Adams does not seem to have remembered that a sentence of condemnation is not necessary where there is no neutral interest in ship or cargo; nor that the practice of using false colors to approach an enemy is regarded in all navies as allowable, provided the true flag be hoisted before a shot is fired. Her Majesty's government is not, however, concerned to defend the conduct of the captain of the Alabama, when out of its jurisdiction, in these or any other particulars. Whatever it may have been, Great Britain is not responsible for it; and if it furnished any reason against the admission of his ship into British ports, it would have been equally valid against her reception in the ports of France and Brazil.

It will have been observed from the foregoing statement, as well as from the fuller narrative which Her Majesty's government has previously presented to the arbitrators, that the cases of the Florida and Alabama differ from one another in various more or less important particulars. But Her Majesty's government again submit that neither in respect of the Alabama nor in respect of the Florida is Great Britain chargeable with any failure of international duty for which reparation is due from her to the United States.

[89]

*PART VII.

THE GEORGIA AND SHENANDOAH.

Passing to the cases of the Georgia and Shenandoah, the tribunal has next to deal with two vessels, as to both of which it is PART VII.-The not only clear that the British government had not, before Georgia and Shenanthey respectively departed from its jurisdiction, any reason

doah.

able ground to believe that they were intended to cruise or carry on war against the United States, but it is also clear that they were not within its jurisdiction armed, fitted out, or equipped or specially adapted, either wholly or in part, to warlike use.

THE GEORGIA.

The Georgia.

The Georgia, as the arbitrators are aware, was a vessel built at Dumbarton, in Scotland, and sent to sea from the port of Greenock in April, 1863. She had undergone, when completed, the customary surveys by the proper officer of the port of Glasgow, and is described by him as appearing to be intended for commercial purposes. Her frame-work and platings were of the ordinary sizes for vessels of her class. The tide-surveyor at Greenock, in like manner, 66 saw nothing on board which could lead him to suspect that she was intended for war purposes." The collector at Greenock adds, from his own observation, that she "was not heavily sparred; indeed, she could not spread more canvas than an ordinary merchant-ship." In short, she was built, fitted up, and rigged as a ship of commerce, and not as a ship of war. Indeed, when the endeavor was afterward made to employ her as a cruiser, she was found upon trial to be not adapted for this purpose, and she was for that reason dismantled and sold before the end of the war, after having been at sea altogether about nine months. She was registered under the name of the Japan, in the name of a Liverpool merchant, and was entered outward, and cleared in the customary way, for a port of destination in the East Indies. She was advertised at the Sailors' Home in Liverpool as about to sail for Singapore; and her crew were hired for a voyage to Singapore or some intermediate port, and for a period of two years. The men, when they were hired, believed this to be the true destination of the ship, and her voyage to be a commercial one; and they appear to have continued under this belief until after the vessel had arrived off the coast of France. The number of her crew appears, from depositions furnished on the part of the United States, to have been about fifty. In the Case of the United States a description of the ship is given, without referring to the evidence on which it is founded. She is described, in one of the depositions obtained and produced by Mr. Adams, as "an iron vessel, very slightly built." There

21 A-II

1 1 Appendix to British Case, vol. i, p. 404.

2 Appendix to Case of the United States, vol. vi, p. 512.

is no reason whatever to believe that when she sailed from Greenock she had a magazine, or that her cabins or interior fittings were of any unusual strength. She had on board joiners who were fitting up her cabins when she left her auchorage. She was, therefore, when she left this country, a ship to which the first three rules mentioned in the sixth article of the treaty would not apply; nor was she a ship with which Her Majesty's government were under any obligation to interfere, according to any known rule or principle of international law.1

The assertion is repeated in this case that the service for which the vessel was constructed was "notorious.”2 In proof of this the arbitrators are furnished with two anonymous letters published in an English newspaper in February, 1863, one of which contained no reference whatever to this or any vessel building or supposed to be building for the Confederate States, while the other declared that upwards of fifty were being built for the government of those States, and mentioned a "fine

screw-steamer," lying in the Clyde and called the Virginia, as re[90] ported to be partly owned by the confederates and *partly by in

dividuals at Nassau; adding, "It is publicly announced that she is soon to be employed on the line between Nassau and Charleston." An anonymous letter, mentioning a report that a particular vessel was destined for a blockade-runner, and was partly owned by the confederate government and partly by private individuals at Nassau, is thus adduced as proof that it was notorious that the same vessel was intended for a confederate cruiser. "Her destination," it is added, "rendered it certain” that she was to carry on war against the United States. Her destination, as we have seen, was Singapore.

In this case again, as in others, the inquiry arises why no information of an enterprise described as having been so "notorious," and of such serious consequences to the United States, was furnished to Her Majesty's government or to the local authorities by the United States consul on the spot, or by Mr. Adams. The latter, it subsequently appeared, had "long been in possession of information about the construction and outfit" of the ship; but "nothing had ever been furnished to him of a nature to take proceedings upon." At all events he remained perfectly silent till nearly a week after the vessel had sailed; and the arbitrators are now asked to decide that because the British government did not take, with respect to a vessel about which it was in entire ignorance, proceedings which Mr. Adams himself knew of no facts to support, Great Britain is guilty of a failure of international duty, and responsible for the consequences of it to the United States.

It is next made a matter of complaint that, when informed that the Georgia had sailed, the government did not send a ship of war in pursuit of her. "The sailing and destination of the Japan," it is said, 66 were so notorious as to be the subject of newspaper comment. No time, therefore, was required for that investigation. It could have been very little trouble to acertain the facts as to the Alar," (the merchantvessel which carried out for her arms, officers, and men.) "The answer to a telegram could have been obtained in a few minutes. Men of war might have been dispatched on the 8th from Portsmouth and Plymouth to seize these violaters of British sovereignty." "This was not done." The sole evidence produced in proof that the sailing and destination of the Japan were notorious on the 8th of April is an extract from a Liverpool paper published on the 9th, which mentioned a report that the ves

1 British Case, p. 122.

2 Case of the United States, pp. 392, 408; Appendix to ditto, vol. vi, p. 503.