tanley's place at the foreign office, and the convention, with some
modifications, was signed by him (Jan. 14, 1869), and in due course
despatched to Washington. There the Senate, not on the merits but for
party and personal reasons, refused to ratify. Though this attempt failed,
neither of the two English political parties was in a position any longer
to refuse arbitration in principle.

Agreement in principle is of little avail, without driving force enough
for practice. The driving force was found mainly from a gradual change in
English sentiment, though the difficulties with Russia also counted for
something. Even so early as 1863 the tide of popular opinion in England
had begun slowly to swell in favour of the Northern cause. In 1866 victory
across the Atlantic was decided, the union was saved, and slavery was
gone. A desire to remove causes of difference between ourselves and the
United States grew at a remarkable speed, for the spectacle of success is
wont to have magical effects even in minds that would indignantly reject
the standards of Machiavelli. While benevolent feeling gained volume in
this country, statesmen in America took ground that made the satisfaction
of it harder. They began to base their claim for reparation on the
original proclamation of British neutrality when the American conflict
began. First made in 1866, this new pretension was repeated in despatches
of 1867, and in 1869 the American secretary formally recorded the
complaint that the Southern insurrection obtained its enduring vitality by
resources drawn from England, and as a consequence of England's imperfect
discharge of her duties as neutral. England became, they said, the
arsenal, the navy-yard, and the treasury of the insurgent Confederacy.

In the discussion of the Clarendon convention of 1869 Mr. Sumner--a man of
some great qualities, but too often the slave of words where he thought
himself their master--made an extravagant speech against the British
government in the senate, assessing the claim of the United States upon
this country on principles that would have raised it to the modest figure
of some four hundred million pounds sterling due from us to them, or, as
Mr. Gladstone himself estimated it, to sixteen hundred millions. It does
not matter which. This was only a violent and fantastic exaggeration of an
idea of constructive claims for indirect damages that lay slumbering, but
by no means extinct, in American minds, until, as