e principle of allowing indirect claims, than to embark on
any discussion of them. The American commissioners knew this principle to
be unsound, but knowing also that their own people expected the claims to
be referred, they could only abstain from insisting on their inclusion.
The British commissioners were willing silently to waive an express
renunciation of them, being confident that the terms of the protocols and
the language of the treaty would be so construed by the arbitrators as to
exclude the indirect claims.(266) All this was a rational and truly
diplomatic temper on both sides; but then the immortal events of a hundred
years before had shown too plainly that Englishmen at home cannot always
be trusted to keep a rational and diplomatic temper; and many events in
the interval had shown that English colonists, even when transfigured into
American citizens, were still chips of the old block. The cabinet agreed
that a virtual waiver of the claims was to be found both in the protocols
of the conference, and in the language of the treaty. Lord Ripon and Mr.
Forster, however, thought it would be safe to go on at Geneva, in the
assurance that the arbitrators would be certain to rule the indirect
claims out. At the other extreme of the cabinet scale, the view was urged
that England should not go on, unless she put upon record a formal
declaration that did she not, and never would, assent to any adjudication
upon the indirect claims. To a certain minister who pressed for some
declaration in this sense,--also formulated in a motion by Lord Russell in
parliament, himself responsible for so much of the original
mischief(267)--Mr. Gladstone wrote as follows:--

_June 17._--... I doubt whether the cabinet can legitimately be
asked, as a cabinet, to make these affirmations, inasmuch as,
according to my view, they are not within the purview of its
present undertaking--that undertaking has reference exclusively to
the scope of the arbitration. We have contended all along that the
claims would not legitimately come before the arbitrators.... But
we had never demanded the assent of the Americans to our
reasoning, only to our conclusion that the claims were not within
the scope of the arbitration. It is my view (but this is quite
another matter) that they lie cast aside, a dishonoured carcass,
which no amount of force, fraud, or folly can again galvanise into
life. You will see then