We have all talked of the Alabama claims and the
Treaty of Washington till we are tired of the subject, yet we sometimes doubt whether one person in a hundred knowe either what the claims are or what the treaty contains. We hear it, for instance, constantly asserted that the Recorder of London is going to Wash- ington to help in settling the Alabama claims. The fact is that he is the English member of a Court of three persons who are finally to determine, not what are popularly called the "Alabama claims ;" but all claims arising out of acts committed during the war in America, "not being claims growing out of the acts of vessels referred to in Article 1 " of the Treaty of Washington. That is, Mr. Russell Gurney and his colleagues are to deal with all claims except those claims which he is supposed by most persons to have undertaken to settle. We wonder, by the way, whether a writer in the Times, who a week or two back heaped eulogies on all con- cerned with the settlement of the Alabama claims, knew that a mass of matters to be arranged under the Treaty has nothing to do with these claims whatever.
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