TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE FIRST DEBATES.
THE meeting of Parliament does, no doubt, reduce greatly the political proportions of many events which have loomed large in the Recess, and we know no better test of comparative magnitude in the political world than the tendency of the meeting of Parliament to make the public conception of such events dilate or contract. The Com- mons had no sooner met on Tuesday than politicians of all parties probably felt that the Dissenters' grievances were not quite so great as they had seemed ; that the Collier case, except only in one respect, was a good deal smaller ; but that the questions arising on the Treaty of Washington were of far greater importance than even the public mind had previously realized. Even Mr. Colman, M.P. for Norwich, the able spokesman of the Dissenters,—and on Tuesday night at least as moderate as he was able,—felt this, and accordingly spoke with much more emphasis and weight on that part of the Ad- dress than even on the subject of Education, with which he closed his speech. Even Mr. Cross, the chosen scourge of the Prime Minister,—chosen, we suppose, for this office because he had the honour of defeating him in South-West Lancashire,—felt it, when he limited his proposed censure on the Collier appoint- ment to a resolution to be moved before going into Committee of Supply, instead of proposing it as a direct vote of want of confidence or censure. Certainly, Mr. Disraeli, who has an acute sense of the proportions of political events, felt it, and only alluded slightly to the many occasions of political contro- versy occurring during the Recess, for which he said the Go- vernment had apologized both unintelligibly and too much. And the Prime Minister himself felt it, though he was painfully conscious, too, of the notorious peculiarity of the Lord Chan- cellor's and his own view of the Judicial Committee Amend- ment Act of last Session, and felt that to convince Parliament and the nation that everybody but themselves had been wrong about the plain meaning of a plain clause would, indeed, be a task of difficulty, while to leave them unconvinced would at best leave a painful doubt, not on the integrity, but certainly on the soundness, of his own ministerial judgment. One would almost rather be convinced of the existence of special reasons for straining the interpretation of an Act, than that it was an Eng- lish Prime Minister's honest belief that this peculiar and unnatural interpretation was the straightforward and natural one ; for the former, as resting expressly on exceptional grounds, would not govern one's expectations of the future course of the Administration, while it is difficult to dissociate so striking an error of judgment as the Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor seem, to most people, anxious to justify, from un- comfortable auguries as to the future.
The whole interest, however, of the first night's debate in both Houses centred very naturally on the line taken by the leaders of Opposition and the declarations of the Government in relation to the Treaty of Washington. There is little to be said in relation to the speeches of Mr. Disraeli, the Duke of Richmond, and Lord Derby, except that they showed a patriotic desire to support the Government in its decided resistance to the novel interpretation put upon the Treaty of Washington by the " American Case." While Mr. Disraeli strongly approved, and Lord Derby as strongly disapproved, the concession to American feeling involved in the consent to negotiate at Washington rather than in London, there was no disposition at all shown by any of the leaders of Opposition to accuse Government of negligence in not making the terms of the Treaty itself more explicit than they are. One good reason for this was, no doubt, that Sir Stafford Northcote, a trusted Conservative chief, was one of the Commissioners, and that he declared as long ago as last August that it was one of the merits of the Treaty of Washington to bar the indirect claims of the American Government ; another was, that the sense in which the English Government accepted and signed the Treaty was publicly explained in the House of Lords, and as it is now asserted, in the presence of the American Ambas- sador,—who was himself, be it remembered, one of the Com- missioners who drew up the Treaty,—and all this before even the Treaty was ratified, and as Mr. Gladstone now tells us, without eliciting the slightest protest or comment from the American Government during the six months which intervened between that debate and the submission of the American Case' at Geneva ;—so that it is indisputable that England did really strictly limit the reference to arbitration to the claims known as " direct.," in which case it cannot possibly be a party question what support the Government ought to receive in maintaining the position they so explicitly took up. In these reasons we concur. But we are disposed, nevertheless, strongly to condemn the policy of leaving anything in Treaties of this description to the mercy of international " understandings." Admit, if you please, what we gladly admit, that the Treaty, especially in connection with the ex- press recital in its preamble that the settlement is " amic- able," a recital on which Mr. Gladstone laid very great stress, on Wednesday, and as interpreted by the light of the Protocols, gives us a very strong case indeed, and the American in- terpretation but a poor one. Still it is hard for anyone,—in spite of Mr. Gladstone's rather strong language,—to deny- that, on the face of those documents, taken alone, the Ame- ricans have a case, though a very poor one ;—hard to doubt that any cautious lawyer would advise that, though the great preponderance of evidence is decidedly with our interpreta- tion, the American interpretation is not, by the documentary evidence, altogether excluded. Either, then, there was a real risk, or if the Commissioners and the Government thought there was none, they relied on expressions for which they are unable to cite chapter and verse, which is precisely what, in matters of this kind, we object to. It would have been far better to sacrifice the Treaty altogether than to have left it vague for any purpose, which, in rendering it less unpalatable to the Senate of the United States, necessarily also rendered it open. to misapprehension and misconstruction. We do not say that the Government are very culpable for doing, what probably any government so confident of having secured a virtual withdrawal of the indirect claims, would have done. We do say it was a hazardous and almost speculative proceeding to leave an apparent ambiguity of any kind in a Treaty of this magni- tude, on the strength of verbal understandings which may after all be misunderstandings, and which, if they are more satis- factory by reason of their ambiguity to one party, must for the very same reason, and in precisely equal degree, be more un- satisfactory, by reason of that same ambiguity, to the other party. Still, as the error has been made,—and there was nothing at all in the Stanley-Johnson Treaty to suggest that it would not have been made by either party in the State,— there can be no doubt that all parties should act cordially together in insisting that the same sense in which our states- men publicly—and without eliciting the slightest deprecatory criticism—interpreted the Treaty before its ratification, which is also by far the most natural sense of the document itself, should now be accepted as the sense, and the only sense, in which it was signed by England. And it is in the highest degree creditable to all parties that not a word has been uttered in any quarter to break this unanimity. Nothing can be firmer or more satisfactory than the declarations of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, nothing better calculated to give them full support than the language of Mr. Disraeli, the Duke of Richmond, and Lord Derby. Our error, which was at least a trustful one,—though trust in diplomacy is a mistake,—cannot have deceived anyone who attended to the language of the Ministry in June last ; and now it will be for the whole country to see that it is never committed again.
But on one point the explanations of the Ministry were not so satisfactory. We can conceive no excuse for the long delay of a month which occurred between the presentation of the American Case and the official protest against its interpretation of the Treaty—only made last Saturday. Mr. Gladstone talks of the necessity of reprinting the American Case for the use of the Cabinet, and of the time necessary for a Cabinet deliberation. Lord Granville goes still further, and positively says, in language which we find it impossible to understand, that he is " happy" to say there was no immediate remonstrance put in. The Duke of Richmond, having asked when the " friendly communica- tion " alluded to in the Queen's Speech was made, and whether it was made " immediately on Her Majesty's Ministers ascertaining the views of the Government of the United States," Lord Granville, somewhat altering the form of the Duke's query, said, " My noble friend asked whether we sent an immediate reply to that Case. I am happy to say we did no such thing, because upon questions which may possibly lead to differences between the two countries it is advisable to pro- ceed calmly and deliberately, and not to throw away the slightest chance of coming to an agreement, if it is possible to do so." Now the Duke of Richmond had not asked whether an immediate reply to the American Case was sent, but only whether an immediate " communication " had been made, —in reference, of course, to the great discrepancy of the two Governments' interpretations of the Treaty of Washington. What possible advantage could delibera- tion on that point, and delay in putting it forward, bring to the Government And what great disadvan- tages might they not bring ? Is it not part of our Case that for six months the Government of the United States tacitly acquiesced in the interpretation that we had publicly put on the Treaty of Washington without protest? And how, then, can it fail to be a point in their favour that for one month our Government seemed to acquiesce in the interpretation that they had put on the Treaty, and made no official protest ? What deliberation was wanted for explaining that on which the whole Cabinet was agreed as long ago as June last,— that we did not admit that the Treaty of Washington conceded arbitration at all on the indirect claims ? Surely Lord Granville himself, on his own authority, or at all events after communicating with the Prime Minister, might have telegraphed at once to the United States that the interpreta- tion put upon the Treaty in the American Case was entirely new to us, and one in which we could not concur. Nothing but danger could arise from delay on a point so important. As long ago as the 13th January last we had explained to our readers the unexpected and, as we held, preposterous demands of " the American Case," and surely quite as soon the Govern- ment might have communicated its surprise and regret at the new and alarming extension given to the Treaty by the United States' Government. The value of delay in deliberating on a new course may be great. But the value of promptitude in explaining an old understanding,—an understanding to which the whole Cabinet was publicly committed,—is even greater. If I found that a contract of mine had been vitally misinter- preted by the other party, I should be a fool for losing a moment in interposing my correction. As far as we can see, the loss of three weeks or a month in this matter was a very serious loss, and laid the Govern- ment, we will not say open to the very serious imputa- tion that, had not public opinion stirred vehemently in the matter, they would not have objected to the American inter- pretation,—for the declarations of June last probably bar that hypothesis,—but yet to the imputation that their surprise and regret were not so great as the surprise and regret of the public, —that the shock to them was not so sudden or so stunning ; and even such an imputation implies a good many points lost in relation to such an international controversy as this. We must maintain that Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville have made a very serious error in not giving immediate expression to the surprise and regret with which they observed the extraordinary divergence of the American and British interpretation of the Treaty of Washington.
With this rather important exception, the line taken up by the Government on this momentous issue is thoroughly manly and sound, and deserving of all support. Mr. Gladstone very properly urged our right to assume that the indirect claims had been finally waived by the United States, not only on the strength of the Treaty itself and our statesmen's public inter- pretation of it, but on the strength of the very large concessions which we had made to the United States, for which this one concession on their part was the sole equivalent. We had consented to arbitration on a matter in relation to which nations have usually asserted,—and the United States have been forward in asserting,—that they were the only proper judges of their own conduct and honour. We had not only done this, but we had agreed in considering the matter to be bound ex post facto by three rules of international law which our Government denied and deny that during the Civil War we had ever recognized as legally binding. We had not only done this, but we had expressed in the frankest spirit our regret that the cruisers should have escaped. Nay, more, we had expressly permitted the United States to include among the direct claims the expenses of the cruisers of the United States' Navy employed in pursuing the illegally escaped vessels (if any). All these great concessions were made on our part out of the abundance of our wish to satisfy the American feeling, and because we supposed that in return America had waived the one class of demands too absurd in themselves, and too preposterous in their magnitude, for us ever to think of referring them to the decision of others. Well might Mr. Gladstone say, and heartily will the nation support him in his assertion, that the Government reserves to itself the right to fall back on the " plea that a man or a nation must be taken to be insane, if supposed to admit in a peaceful arbitration claims of this character, which not even the last extremities of war and the lowest depths of misfortune would force a people with a spark of spirit,—with the hundredth part of the tradi- tions or the courage of the people of this country,—to submit to at the point of death." The statesmen of the United States may assume that these words represent the absolutely unanimous resolve of the people of England. If the decision of the Washington Cabinet is correctly reported, the Treaty of Washington is already at an end.
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