presented in vigorous form, and while our minister in London made reclamation for the damages incurred, he proposed to sub mit all the questions involved to arbitration. At the close of the war when the authority of the Union was fully established through out the revolted territory, our government renewed its claims of reparation on account of the British disregard of the principles of international law and for the damages in flicted thereby on our citizens. To these demands the British government replied in a spirit very far from conciliatory. Earl Russell, the Minister for Foreign Af fairs, referring to the questions for whose ad justment Mr. Adams had proposed arbi tration, said: It appears to Her Majesty's government that neither of these questions could be put to a foreign government with any regard to the dignity and character of the British crown and the British nation. Her Majesty's government are the sole guar dians of their own honor . . . and must therefore decline either to make reparation and compensation ... or to refer the ques tion to any foreign state." Here was a con spicuous avowal by a proud government in an important controversy of "the national honor," which is so often put forward as a bar or objection to an agreement for arbi tration. Yet the sequel proves that when a nation is able to free itself from the he-it and rancor of the dispute, "the national honor" is more involved in an equitable and peace ful settlement than in a stubborn adherence to a preconceived opinion to the detriment of the interests of the nation. Although our people at the close of the war were wrought up by a bitterness of spirit against the British government and felt keenly the wrongs which had been inflicted, they were content to bide their time for a better state of public sentiment in England. Without abating in any degree our claims, but in a spirit of calmness, Secretary Seward informed our Minister in London that he
would not again press the proposition for arbitration, but would await the action of the British government. He said, how ever, that there was not a member of the government, nor, so far as he knew, any citi zen of the United States, who expected that the country would in any case waive its demands upon the British government for the redress of wrongs committed in violation of international law. In the course of a iev years a change of ministry occurred in England, ^nd meanwhile the sentiment of its people had been materially modified. They began to feel that the so-called "national honor" ought not to stand in the way of a peaceful settlement of questions about which the American people felt so deeply and which might at any time be fanned into a hostile spirit. With the change of ministry there came an intimation of a willingness to take up the subject anew, and out of this grew the Joint High Commission, the result of whose deliberations was the treaty of Wash ington in 1871. This treaty created the Tribunal of Ge neva, the most important arbitration in which the United States ever engaged and probably the most august and imposing ever held in the world. It involved questions of supreme importance and pecuniary claims of great magnitude, but its special significance was in the fact of two great nations be ing able to compose weighty matters, which had awakened the passions of their people to a high state of bitterness, by an appeal to reason and the arbitrament of friendly pow ers in place of war. Its influence on the world was great and far reaching, and the United States may justly claim the credit for this beneficent event, through its patient but persistent adherence to the peaceful pol icy of arbitration. 1 have recalled these well-known historic? 1 facts to accentuate the devotion of our coun
