ch the Americans
after the diplomatist's manner insisted on treating as if they were not
small but great. The sharp corner in the London cabinet was the more
serious proposal, that certain rules as to the duty of neutrals should be
laid down, and should be made guiding principles for the arbitrators,
although the rules themselves had not been formally established when
England's alleged breaches of neutral obligation had been committed. This
retro-active or _ex-post-facto_ quality, when the cabinet considered it
(March 18), gave trouble, and it was used by passionate and impolitic
persons to tarnish the whole policy in this country. Much heat was evoked,
for a cabinet of many talents is not always the same thing as a cabinet of
plain minds. One clever man objected at large to the commission, to
concession, to obtaining any principle of settlement for future
contingencies. A second was violent against all such arbitration as this,
and thought they had much better pay up at once and have done with it. A
third clever man even let fall some high words about "national dishonour."
Granville, Argyll, Forster (the last described by a colleague as "a tower
of strength"), were steadfast and unfaltering for conciliation. Mr.
Gladstone agreed, but eager though he was for a settlement, he "agreed
with reluctance." Sir Roundell Palmer had now great influence with him,
and Palmer had come round to the conclusion that the risk from translating
retrospectively into the form of a hypothetical international convention,
not existing when the events happened, a duty that we had recognised as
incumbent on us under our own law, might be safely run.(262) In plain
English, the adverse way of describing this peculiar substitute for a free
and open arbitration, was that Great Britain owed the Americans nothing,
and if she had not consented to accept a set of new-fangled rules, and to
be judged retro-actively by them, she could not possibly have been made to
pay anything. To this the short answer was that though the rules might or
might not be new-fangled as principles of international law, yet they were
not new as principles of English municipal law, which, as construed by the
British government itself, was coincident in substance with those rules.
Was it in fact reasonable to contend that ironclads might be built in the
Mersey, sent out a few miles beyond the river mouth, there armed from
lighters, and sent off to bombard New York? If not, was it re