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The Green Bag
wealth of learning displayed by Cushing and will be amply repaid by a careful study of the entire opinion. HIS SERVICE AT THE GENEVA ARBITRATION
I desire to speak with some detail of the great service Cushing rendered to the United States at the Geneva Arbitra tion. When our Civil War was ended, the people of the North, who had spent countless treasures in money and blood to maintain the Union, felt intense in dignation towards Great Britain. We believed that Great Britain had been under an obligation to maintain neutral ity, a duty imposed on her by the law of nations; and that she had violated this obligation by suffering her ports to become the arsenal and the navy yard of the Confederates, and we further con tended that the Confederate cruisers, which had destroyed our shipping, could never have taken and held the sea but for the gross negligence of the British Government, and that by the latter's premature recognition of the belligerency of the Confederates and her aid subse quently furnished in the British ports the war had been greatly prolonged. Our feeling towards England was typified by Lowell in this verse from the "Biglow papers": —• You wonder why we're hot, John, Your mark wus on the guns; The neutral guns that shot, John, Our brothers an' our sons.
The feeling of England and her press, was and for some years had been one of distinct hostility to the North. Thus the London Times spoke of us as a "degenerate people," while Punch waxed funny and referred to us as "the Untied States." Lord Russell in 1862 had notified Mr. Adams that England de clined to make reparation for the captures
made by the Alabama or to arbitrate the question, while in September of 1865 he wrote Gladstone that England would be disgraced forever if the claim of the United States was left to arbitration and that he thought paying twenty million pounds would be far preferable. The unspeakable calamity of wax between these two great English speak ing nations was imminent. Happily the differences between the two coun tries were submitted to arbitration. The agreement to arbitrate, formerly called the Treaty of Washington, and entered into on the eighth day of May, 1871, provided that the claims of the United States should be referred to five arbitrators, one appointed by the Presi dent of the United States, one by Great Britain, one by the King of Italy, one by the President of the Swiss Confederation and one by the Emperor of Brazil. It is not generally known that Cush ing rendered a most important service in bringing about the arbitration. Cush ing was sincerely desirous of peace, and through his acquaintance with Sir John Rose arranged a meeting between Secre tary Hamilton Fish and Rose, at which Cushing was present, when various tentative propositions for arbitration were discussed. To Caleb Cushing is due no small credit that a treaty of arbi tration was made, and that through the instrumentality of such a treaty war with England was avoided. The five arbitrators were promptly appointed, the United States selecting Mr. Charles Francis Adams; Great Britain, the Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, Sir Alexander Cockburn; the King of Italy, Count Frederick Sclopis; the Emperor of Bra zil, the Baron d'ltajuba; and the President of the Swiss Confederation, Jacob Stacmpfli. In accordance with the terms of the
