taking the guns on board outside of the port-in nowise alters the position of the parties, according to the law of nations, whatever its effect may be in construing a municipal statute.

I would not, however, be understood to contend that it would be the duty or even the right of a neutral to pursue the offending belligerent beyond his own territorial limits for a violation of neutrality within his jurisdiction, and our own courts have held that though restitution would be made of the property unlawfully taken, when brought within our power, we have not the right to award damages against the captor, or to proceed against a vessel itself, whether public ship or privateer, having the sovereign's commission, which had offended against our neutrality. The course of England, in following the Portuguese expedition, in 1829, to Terceira, was condemned, in his place in Parliament, by that eminent expounder of international law, Sir James Mackintosh.

Viewed in the light in which we have been considering it, there is no difference in principle between our duty to England, so promptly recognized at the commencement of the French revolution, and the obligations of that country to us during the late civil war, though the circumstances were different. I particularly refer to what occurred in the time of Washington, because the United States then had no neutrality laws, the first act having been passed in 1794,- and whatever was done was based on the law of nations. The United States were then neutral, but they were bound by the treaty of 1778 with France, made long before the existing war, and which has been alluded to as giving to her the right, exclusive of her enemies, of bringing her prizes into the ports of the United States. The grievance was not that she sent her prizes there, a right which England did not dispute, but that she used our ports for the purpose of fitting out privateers to cruize against English commerce and that captures were made within our limits.

No prizes made by confederate vessels, whether fitted out in English ports or not, were brought within British jurisdiction and consequently no restitution in specie, as in our case, could

be made. They were kept out by a general prohibition, to which reference has been made as entitling England to some regard on our part; but the depredations on our commerce, by cruisers fitted out or built in England, in the burning of our vessels at sea, were not the less disastrous than if an English asylum had been open to them. Though the French prizes were brought into our ports, and were therefore, in a certain sense, within our power, it was not, besides the danger that we incurred from France, an easy task for our government to comply with the demands for restitution. Nice questions were raised as to the respective powers of the executive and judiciary in such cases. General Washington did not, however, rest his course, as to a foreign nation, on any technical grounds, not defensible under the law of nations; but it was only through the exercise, by our admiralty courts, of a power, for which Sir Travers Twiss says no English precedent can be found since the time of Sir Lionel Jenkins, that the restitution was effected. Such an exercise of power by our courts was confessedly an exception to the general rule, that the trial of captures on the high seas belongs exclusively to the courts of the nation to which the captors belong. Our courts, however, held, and continue to hold, that if the capture be made within the territorial limits of a neutral country into which the prize is brought, or by a privateer which has been illegally equipped in such neutral country, the prize courts of that country not only possess the power, but it is their duty to restore the property to the owner. This was done, to the private claimant, though the propriety of that course, without the intervention of his government, has been questioned by Judge Story. Not only was restitution made where the prizes were within our territory, whenever that could be done without involving us in a conflict with France, but where it could not, compensation in specified cases was made by us under the treaty of 1794; a fact which will afford to the Brit. ish High Commissioners a precedent, if their course should be questioned in their own country.

The correspondence between the two governments after the Alabama escaped in 1862, interspersed with complaints about

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premature recognition, was mainly taken up with accounts of Mr. Adams's efforts to induce the English courts to carry into effect their own neutrality laws, while we were met by being reminded of similar reclamations made on us by the Spanish and Portuguese governments during the revolutions in South America.

Contrary to the course of the United States in confiding the execution of her neutrality acts, including that of 1818, to the admiralty courts, the English act of 1819 gave jurisdiction to the common law courts; and the case of the Alexandra, which was formally decided in favor of the defendant, though the opinions of the judges of the Court of Exchequer were divided on a technical question of construction, produced an irritation in the minds of the American people which neither the decision, in a contrary sense, of a Scotch court, nor even the interposition of the government in the purchase of the Anglo-Chinese squadron, supposed to be intended for the South, had any effect in allaying. In our diplomatic correspondence, if it be permitted here to make any comment on it, it would seem to be a matter to be noticed that we allowed ourselves to be drawn into a discussion whether the English laws had or had not been executed, thus apparently withdrawing the case from its only true test, the law of nations.

That the United States had at least a prima facie claim for indemnity is admitted by the preamble of the first article of the treaty, expressing the regret of her Majesty's government "for the escape, under whatever circumstances, of the Alabama and other vessels from British ports, and for the depredations committed by those vessels."

Nor since Earl Russell, during whose administration of the Department of Foreign Affairs these untoward events occurred, has there been any indisposition to submit the questions arising from the Alabama claims-as well as others which the subjects or citizens of the one country had against the government of the other—to international adjudication.

A proposition for a treaty to settle general claims was made by Mr. Seward in 1862, before the Alabama matter arose. It was renewed by Lord Russell in 1865, but he stated that in his proposal the Alabama and other similar claims were not included. In March, 1867, however, Lord Stanley submitted a proposition for a limited reference to arbitration in the socalled Alabama claims, and adjudication, by means of a mixed commission, of general claims; a proposition which seems to have been the precedent for that which led to the appointment of the High Commission. That the matter then failed arose from the persistency of Mr. Seward in maintaining, despite the remonstrance of Mr. Adams, that the national injuries sustained by the United States, from what was declared to be the premature recognition of the confederate belligerency, should be embraced in the arrangement.

Lord Stanley had, in November preceding, said that her Majesty's government could not consent to refer to a foreign power to determine whether the policy of recognizing the confederate belligerency was or was not suitable to the circumstances of the time when that recognition was made. Mr. Seward, in answer, said that the United States government would not object to arbitration, but would expect to refer the contro versy just as it is found in the correspondence which has taken place between the two goverments, with such further evidence and arguments as either party may desire, without imposing restrictions upon the umpire. To such an unlimited reference Lord Stanley objected for this, among other reasons, that it would compel the submission of the very question which he had already said he could not agree to submit.

Further negotiations on this subject were postponed to the naturalization and San Juan conventions. Mr. Johnson, in going to London in 1868, was instructed that those questions must be arranged before any discussion on the claims convention could be entertained. Whatever excitement might have heretofore prevailed as to the rights of naturalized citizens, the present importance, in the view of the American people, of the former of these matters would seem to have been

exaggerated. The law officers of the crown declared that no naturalization convention could be made without affecting essentially the operations of the laws of descent and of many other portions of the common law, and they suggested that similar changes in the law of the American States which retained the common law would be necessary. A convention which had been preceded by a protocol, in order to await the action of Parliament, was concluded on March 13, 1870, a statute making the required changes in the law having passed the preceding day; yet it would appear from the debate in the New York Senate, that, when an act was introduced at the late session to make the laws of that State to conform to the treaty by adopting an act founded on the English statute, the Senator, whose argument had a controlling influence, was ignorant alike of the convention and of the Expatriation act of Congress which had induced the Federal government to conclude it.

The requisite protocols having been signed on both the other subjects, Mr. Johnson attempted an arrangenent of a claims convention in a mode by which to avoid any mention of the apparently irreconcilable views of the two countries. This, Mr. Johnson tells us, was accomplished as well in the treaty of November 10, 1868, which was rejected by the President without being submitted to the Senate, as in that of the 14th of January, 1869, without obliging either party "to eat his own words," by the general terms of the reference of all claims arising since 1853 of the citizens of the one State on the government of the other, whether or not arising out of the civil war. A clause was inserted at Mr. Seward's special suggestion, in the second article of the treaty of January 14, 1869, requiring that "the official correspondence which has taken place between the two governments, respecting any claims, shall be laid before the commission." This, it was supposed, would secure the notice of the subject of rebel belligerency by the sovereign, whose appointment for the purpose of the Alabama claims, so-called, which though particularly named were included in a general reference, was contemplated, an ordinary