d France has broken out,
and was still flagrant when President Grant's recommendation for paying
the _Alabama_ claims from the National Treasury was sent to Congress.
Though the foreign conflict terminated without involving other nations,
it forcibly reminded England of the situation in which she might be
placed if she should be drawn into a European war, the United States
being a neutral power. It would certainly be an unjust imputation upon
the magnanimity and upon the courage of the people of the United States
to represent them as waiting for an opportunity to inflict harm upon
England for her conduct towards this Government in the hour of its
calamity and its distress. It was not by indirection, or by stealthy
blows, or by secret connivance with enemies, or by violations of
international justice, that the United States would ever have sought
to avenge herself on England for the wrongs she had received. If there
had been a disposition among the American people impelling them to
that course, it would assuredly have impelled them much farther.

But England was evidently apprehensive that if she should become
involved in war, the United States would, as a neutral power, follow
the precedent which the English Government had set in the war of the
rebellion, and in this way inflict almost irreparable damage upon
British shipping and British commerce. Piratical _Alabamas_ might
escape from the harbors and rivers of the United States as easily as
they had escaped from the harbors and rivers of England; and she might
well fear that if a period of calamity should come to her, the people
of the United States, with the neglect or connivance of their
Government, would be as quick to add to her distress and embarrassment
as the people of England, with the neglect or connivance of their
Government, had added to the distress and embarrassment of the United
States. Conscience does make cowards of us all; and Great Britain,
foreseeing the possibility of being herself engaged in a European war,
was in a position to dread lest her ill intentions and her misdeed in
the time of our civil struggle should return to plague her.

These facts and apprehensions seem to have wrought a great change in
the disposition of the British Government, and led them to seek a
re-opening of the negotiation. In an apparently unofficial way Sir
John Rose, a London banker (associated in business with Honorable L.
P. Morton, a well-known banker and disti