corps d'armée, no national police at all, and a population especially averse to State interference in matters of local trade, and particularly inclined to encourage adventurous enterprises. There are places-they may be counted by hundreds-along the coast of the United States where a belligerent cruiser could enter and replenish her contraband stores and increase her crew without the least danger of interference, and yet the United States have proposed, and have obtained the sanction of a Court of Arbitration to, an extension of the principles of international law, involving responsibilities and liabilities which would make the position of a neutral but little less onerous than that of a belligerent. And what have the United States gained in return? A transient diplomatic triumph and a paltry $15,500,000, an amount which cannot cover the regret every American must feel who reads the exorbitant and ill-considered claims that were presented to the arbitrators, and who learns from the British Counter-Case' how largely and for what reasons those claims were reduced in amount.

If the principles contended for by the United States were to be generally adopted, neutrals would be obliged to prohibit all traffic with belligerents, and to exclude all belligerent vessels from their ports. Powers like Great Britain, France, and the German Empire have possibly the police organization and the military and naval force necessary to guard all points and to enforce their prohibitions, but the United States and many other Powers are manifestly unequal to such a task, and they could not isolate their whole population from contact with maritime belligerents by any legislative or administrative restrictions.

The extension of belligerent rights which the United

States claimed and practised during the Civil War in respect to the search of neutral vessels on the high seas and of blockade, would be favourable to Great Britain with her numerous and powerful marine, and the broad interpretation of neutral duties prescribed in the rules of the Treaty of Washington would work to her advantage if she should be again drawn into a great war. But the United States as a neutral would be simply ruined by the application of those rules to them as a neutral Power. American ships could not approach the hemisphere in which either belligerent was situated without the certainty of search and capture, and they would incur incalculable damages for violations of their neutrality, which they could only prevent by openly espousing the cause of one of the belligerents, which, under all the circumstances, would probably be the safest and the cheapest course.

The Alabama Claims' afforded a favourable opportunity for establishing a new and philanthropic method of settling international disputes, and they might have been the means of defining the relative rights and duties of belligerents and neutrals, so as to have greatly simplified the very complex and elastic code commonly called international law, and to have relieved some of the doubts and embarrassments of neutrals. But neither Power approached the subject in the right spirit. Great Britain yielded reluctantly, after years of opposition; the United States pressed their claims angrily, and demanded exorbitant and impossible concessions. At last, when the two Powers agreed to refer their differences to arbitration, they went before the Tribunal without any common understanding of the rules they had bound themselves to be judged by, and they wrangled over their meaning during the whole hearing of the cases,

Great Britain protesting to the last that the United States sought to give them an interpretation not contemplated by her Britannic Majesty's Government at the ratification of the Treaty.

The Geneva Arbitration' must therefore be recorded in history as a great international fiasco. It is thought by some to have saved the cost and peril of a war between Great Britain and the United States. This is important, if true, and no one is now disposed to be critical on that point, or desires to begrudge it the credit of having done that much in the cause of peace; but it was not the means of founding any new law, or clearly defining any old one. It laid down no general principle whatever, and the rights of belligerents and the duties of neutrals remain in the fog which has enveloped them ever since strong maritime Powers first began to enforce the one and exact the other-for that is the process by which 'international law' became the code of nations.'

No one who has had occasion to consult the standard authorities in respect to the rights and duties of belligerents and neutrals, or to search for precedents, is likely to attempt a dogmatic exposition of the law. It has, however, been commonly agreed heretofore that there can be no such thing as contraband goods on board of a neutral ship, when she is bound from one neutral port to another. The United States, previous to the Civil War, always contended for that doctrine, but during that great struggle their anxiety to isolate the South caused them to lose sight of every consideration but that of a present advantage. They stopped on the high seas, boarded, searched, and captured, neutral ships while sailing between neutral ports hundreds of miles from the blockaded coast, and have thus established precedents which will give them much trouble whenever

they may occupy the position of a neutral during a war between two strong maritime Powers.

THE RULES PRESCRIBED IN ARTICLE VI. OF THE

TREATY.

NOTE FOR PAGE 387.

'A neutral Government is bound

'First, To use due diligence to prevent the fitting out, arming, or equipping, within its jurisdiction, of any vessel which it has reasonable ground to believe is intended to cruise or to carry on war against a Power with which it is at peace; and also to use like diligence to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise or carry on war as above, such vessel being specially adapted, in whole or in part, within such jurisdiction, to warlike use.

'Secondly,-Not to permit or suffer either belligerent to make use of its ports or waters as the base of naval operations against the other, or for the purpose of the renewal or augmentation of military supplies or arms, or the recruitment of men.

Thirdly,-To exercise due diligence in its own ports and waters, and, as to all persons within its jurisdiction, to prevent any violation of the foregoing obligations and duties.'

NOTE FOR PAGE 400.

The award, in respect to money indemnity, etc., was rendered in the following words :

The Tribunal, making use of the authority conferred upon it by Article VII. of the said Treaty, by a majority of four voices to one, awards to the United States a sum of 15,500,000 dollars in gold as the indemnity to be paid by Great Britain to the United States for the satisfaction of all the claims referred to the consideration of the Tribunal, conformably to the provisions contained in Article VII. of the aforesaid Treaty.'

CHAPTER VI.

Position of the Confederate Agents at the end of the War.-Financial difficulties. The United States and the property of the Confederate Government.-Proceedings against Messrs. Fraser, Trenholm, and Co. by the United States Government.-Presidents Lincoln and Johnson. The 'reconstruction' of the Southern States.--Political condition of the United States at the present day.

ALTHOUGH the shifts to which the fiscal agents of the Confederate Government were driven in their efforts to supply the ever-increasing wants of the country, and the condition of the Confederate finances in Europe at the close of the Civil War, are not perhaps subjects of much historical importance, yet a narrative whose purpose it is to reveal the means by which aggressive operations against the Federal Government were organized abroad, would scarcely be complete without some explanation of the peculiar and perplexing position in which the representatives of the Confederate States in Europe were placed by the sudden and complete overthrow of the authority under which they had been acting.

While Mr. Davis and his Cabinet could maintain their position in Richmond, they fulfilled all the practical requirements of a de facto Government, and were recognised as such by foreign Powers. Even the United States were