the second reading of the bill is commenced. When the first paragraph has been read, I shall propose to strike out the enacting clause. If the committee will do that, we can kill the bill to-day. It is not simply a stalking-horse upon which gentlemen can leap to show their horsemanship in debate; it is not an innocent lay-figure upon which gentlemen may spread the gaudy wares of their rhetoric without harm; but it is a great, dangerous monster, a very Polyphemus, which stalks through the land. "Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." Let us cut off its head, and end the agony! THE HALIFAX AWARD. REMARKS MADE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, THE Treaty of Washington, July 4, 1871, contained provisions for submitting certain disputes concerning the fisheries to a board of three commissioners, one to be named by the President of the United States, one by her Britannic Majesty, and one by the two conjointly, or, in case they could not agree, by the Spanish Minister at Washington. This board found by a vote of two to one that the government of the United States should pay to the government of Great Britain $5,500,000 in gold, in return for certain privileges accorded to the citizens of the United States under Article XVIII. of said treaty. This is known as the "Halifax Award," made at Halifax, November 23, 1877. The proposition to pay the award came before the House of Representatives in the form of an amendment to the Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill. Payment was resisted on various grounds. Pending this proposition, Mr. Garfield made the following remarks. The proposition finally prevailed in both houses, and payment was duly made. MR R. SPEAKER, -I hope the members of this House will put out of their minds for a moment the question of technicality and of money, and think of this tremendous fact, that here, to-night, within the next twenty minutes, by our votes, we are to close the diplomacy of the late war. Our war covered three great fields, battles, legislation, diplomacy. It is not often that any company of men is permitted by a single act to close a seventeen-year series of great historical events. The events we shall conclude to-night almost equal in importance the battles of our war, and fully equal the importance of our war legislation. This act concludes the history of our war diplomacy. No one who has carefully studied that history can fail to admire the remarkable success of our republic in its war diplomacy. Remember that in the outset the monarchical nations of Europe looked upon our great conflict with satisfaction, and said: "The republic goes down in blood and darkness. It is as we told you, the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is a failure, and dies by its own hand." England folded her arms, and said proudly: "We will not lend you a dollar to aid you in a war upon a sister republic." In the midst of our agony, France seized Mexico, our sister republic, and said, "We will plant imperialism upon the Western conti We were girdled by the unfriendly powers of Europe. But the republic entered the field of diplomacy, and history has recorded its triumphs. Napoleon was outgeneralled; and the coalition that was to plant an Austrian monarchy in Mexico was broken. When I was in France, soon after our war, I was frequently told that, as Frenchmen looked across the occan, the foremost American in their estimation, after Lincoln, was William H. Seward. And why? I asked. Because he shattered a great coalition, and defeated Napoleon's scheme of conquest in Mexico. Maximilian was abandoned to his tragic fate, and the shadow of monarchy vanished as he fell. Still more serious were our difficulties with England, commencing with that exciting affair of the Trent, which for a time threatened us with a foreign war, added to our home war. With a skill and foresight of the highest order, this and similar dangers were tided over, and at last the complicated difficulties in which we were involved with England were submitted to arbitration. All our troubles, those that grew out of the war and those which grew out of the Vancouver Island controversy, the fisheries question, and the Alabama claims, all were submitted to peaceable arbitration. This was itself a triumph that marked an era of civilization. The great congress now in session at Berlin is in the line of the great Geneva precedent. In one of our controversies his Majesty the venerable Emperor of Germany was made the arbitrator, and decided the Vancouver case in our favor. Then came the great tribunal at Geneva, which was managed on our side with a skill and wisdom of which all Americans should be proud. We won the case, and England paid us $15,500,000 promptly and without a word of protest. In view of the fact that national claims were rejected, and only claims of private citizens were allowed, we received far more than was really due to our citizens. It is a fair question whether as a matter of honor we ought not to pay back to England the surplus. We have carried every point in this war of diplomacy except the last, and now as the last act in the long series we have the award of the Fishery Commission. As a matter of personal opinion, I think, with the gentleman from Massachusetts,1 that we got the worst of it; that the award made against us is exorbitant and unreasonable. I do not think that any just estimate could have shown that five and a half millions of dollars was fairly due. But what shall I say, what shall any American say, when we remember that in our career of successful diplomacy during these seventeen years we have suffered only this one comparatively small reverse? Shall we demand payment when the award is in our favor, and refuse it when the award is against us? Even gamblers pay their gambling debts, I am told. Fair men everywhere pay when they agree to pay. Much more should a great nation pay. It would be infinitely disgraceful for the United States to higgle about the amount, or to stand a single moment on any mere technicality. The gentleman from Massachusetts has stated the whole strength of the case against the validity of the award, both as to the excessive amount and the fact that the award is not the unanimous act of the Commission. I am glad he has made these points. He has been furnishing our Executive with arguments to be used as contemplated in the provisions of this very amendment before us. What are those provisions? We are not now appropriating money to pay the award. We are appropriating money, in the language of the amendment, to be placed at the disposal of the President. For what purpose? In order that, "if, after correspondence with the British government on the subject of the conformity of the award to the requirements of the treaty and to the terms of the question thereby submitted to the Commission, the President shall deem it his duty to make the payment without further communication with Congress," he may make the payment. We place at the President's disposal a sufficient amount of money, and empower him to pay the award, if, after a full examination of the case and an interchange of opinion with the equal sovereign with 1 Mr. Butler. whom we are treating, he finds it to be due. We give him the means to close and crown our war diplomacy, and we have no doubt that he will do whatever the honor of the nation demands. That is what we propose. I should be ashamed of my associates in this House if they should refuse to put this money in the hands of the Executive. I am sure this republic will not higgle when she gets the worst in one part of the mighty transaction in which she got the best in every other part. Let us close the war, so far as diplomacy is concerned, by the vote we shall now give. |