At once his weakest and his most thoroughly anti-English point
was this,—that in agreeing to put before the Arbitrators as a Claim the expenses of the United States' Navy in pursuing any of the escaped cruisers for which English negligence should be declared by the Tribunal liable, we had weakened our only strong point, the instruction to the Board of Assessors to apportion the damages to the individual cruisers for which our liability had been determined. Lord Cairns admitted that "the Indirect Claims" could not be so apportioned, and he had thought this, he said, the only strong argument for our con- struction of the Treaty. But this argument was given up, he said, when we admitted the expenses of the United States' Navy in pur- suing them. Why ? Is it not perfectly easy to produce the log of each ship sent out to cruise against the Alabama, or the Georgia, or the Florida, and send in a bill for its expenses while so engaged, as part of the account due in respect of the Alabama, Georgia, or Florida respectively ? Lord Cairns is too strong a partisan to be really judicial when his country is represented by one side of the Case and his party by the other. His country kicks the beam.
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