If we look at the negotiation which immediately preceded the treaty,
we find little to commend. You have it on your table. I think I am not
mistaken, when I say that it shows a haste which finds few precedents
in diplomacy, but which is explained by the anxiety to reach a
conclusion before the advent of a new Administration. Mr. Seward and
Mr. Reverdy Johnson unite in this unprecedented activity, using the
Atlantic cable freely. I should not object to haste, or to the freest
use of the cable, if the result were such as could be approved; but,
considering the character of the transaction, and how completely the
treaty conceals the main cause of offence, it seems as if the honorable
negotiators were engaged in huddling something out of sight.
The treaty has for its model the Claims Convention of 1853. To take
such a convention as a model was a strange mistake. This convention
was for the settlement of outstanding claims of American citizens on
Great Britain, and of British subjects on the United States, which had
arisen since the Treaty of Ghent in 1814. It concerned individuals
only, and not the nation. It was not in any respect political; nor was
it to remove any sense of national wrong. To take such a convention as
the model for a treaty which was to determine a national grievance of
transcendent importance in the relations of two countries marked on the
threshold an insensibility to the true nature of the difference to be
settled. At once it belittled the work to be done.
An inspection of the treaty shows how from beginning to end it is
merely for the settlement of individual claims on both sides, putting
the two batches on an equality, so that the sufferers by the misconduct
of England may be counterbalanced by British blockade-runners. It
opens with a preamble, which, instead of announcing the unprecedented
question between the two countries, simply refers to individual claims
that have arisen since 1853,--the last time of settlement,--some
of which are still pending and remain unsettled. Who would believe
that under these words of commonplace was concealed the unsettled
difference which has already so deeply stirred the American people,
and is destined, until finally adjusted, to occupy the attention of
the civilized world? Nothing here gives notice of the real question. I
quote the preamble, as it is the key-note to the treaty:--
“Whereas claims have at various times since the exchange of
the ratifications of the convention between Great Britain and
the United States of America, signed at London on the 8th of
February, 1853, been made upon the Government of her Britannic
Majesty on the part of citizens of the United States, and upon
the Government of the United States on the part of subjects of
her Britannic Majesty; and whereas _some of such claims are
still pending and remain unsettled_; her Majesty the Queen
of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the
President of the United States of America, being of opinion
that a speedy and equitable settlement of all such claims will
contribute much to the maintenance of the friendly feelings
which subsist between the two countries, have resolved to make
arrangements for that purpose by means of a convention.”[51]
The provisions of the treaty are for the trial of these cases. A
commission is constituted, which is empowered to choose an arbitrator;
but, in the event of a failure to agree, the arbitrator shall be
determined “by lot” from two persons, one named by each side. Even
if this aleatory proceeding were a proper device in the umpirage of
private claims, it is strangely inconsistent with the solemnity which
belongs to the present question. The moral sense is disturbed by
such a process at any stage of the trial; nor is it satisfied by the
subsequent provision for the selection of a sovereign or head of a
friendly state as arbitrator.
The treaty not merely makes no provision for the determination of
the great question, but it seems to provide expressly that it shall
never hereafter be presented. A petty provision for individual claims,
subject to a set-off by the individual claims of England, so that in
the end our country may possibly receive nothing, is the consideration
for this strange surrender. I borrow a term from an English statesman
on another occasion, if I call it a “capitulation.”[52] For the
settlement of a few individual claims, we condone the original
far-reaching and destructive wrong. Here are the plain words by which
this is done:--
“The high contracting parties engage to consider the result
of the proceedings of this commission as a full and final
settlement of every claim upon either Government arising out
of any transaction of a date prior to the exchange of the
ratifications of the present convention; and further engage
that every such claim, whether or not the same may have been
presented to the notice of, made, preferred, or laid before the
said commission, shall, from and after the conclusion of the
proceedings of the said commission, be considered and treated
as finally settled and barred, and thenceforth inadmissible.”
All this I quote directly from the treaty. It is Article V. The
national cause is handled as nothing more than a bundle of individual
claims, and the result of the proceedings under the proposed treaty
is to be “a full and final settlement,” so that hereafter all claims
“shall be considered and treated as finally settled and barred, and
thenceforth inadmissible.” Here is no provision for the real question,
which, though thrust out of sight, or declared to be “finally settled
and barred,” according to the terms of the treaty, must return to
plague the two countries. Whatever the treaty may say in terms, there
is no settlement in fact; and until this is made, there will be
constant menace of discord. Nor can it be forgotten that there is no
recognition of the rule of international duty applicable to such cases.
This, too, is left unsettled.
While doing so little for us, the treaty makes ample provision for
all known claims on the British side. As these are exclusively
“individual,” they are completely covered by the text, which has no
limitations or exceptions. Already it is announced in England that
even those of “Confederate bondholders” are included. I have before
me an English journal which describes the latter claims as founded
on “immense quantities of cotton, worth at the time of their seizure
nearly two shillings a pound, which were then in the legal possession
of those bondholders”; and the same authority adds, “These claims
will be brought, indifferently with others, before the designed joint
commission, whenever it shall sit.” From another quarter I learn that
these bondholders are “very sanguine of success _under the treaty as
it is worded_, and certain it is that the loan went up from 0 to 10 as
soon as it was ascertained that the treaty was signed.” I doubt if the
American people are ready just now to provide for any such claims. That
they have risen in the market is an argument against the treaty.