Minister, Sir Frederic Bruce, as umpire between us and the United States of Colombia. And at the same period of time, Great Britain accepted Mr. B. R. Curtis, of Massachusetts, as umpire under the Treaty for settling the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company against the United States. And in this case, be it remembered, the Commissioners, just men both, Sir John Rose and Mr. Alexander S. Johnson, agreed on their award without troubling Mr. Curtis.

Under the previous claims' Treaty between Great Britain and the United States, the two Governments in the first instance agreed on ex-President Van Buren as umpire, and, on his declining, they chose Mr. Bates, an American Banker residing in London.

Under the claims' Treaty between the United States and New Granada, an American, Mr. Upham, of New Hampshire, was umpire; and another American, Dr. Francis Lieber, of New York, under the recent Treaty between the United States and the Mexican Republic.

Strongest of all is the case of the Treaty between Paraguay and the United States, which submitted their controversy to an American citizen, Mr. Cave Johnson, of Tennessee, as sole arbiter, and he decided against the United States.

Is it possible to misapprehend the moral of such facts? In all these various aspects of the subject, do we not perceive the sense of justice tending every day to penetrate deeper and deeper into the councils of nations, and the voice of reason, of which international law is the expression, influencing more and more the action of Governments?

THEORY OF ARBITRATION.

Sovereign States, it has been said, should be trusted to do justice spontaneously, and without humbling themselves to be judged by an arbitrator. It might

with just as good reason be said that all men should be trusted to do justice spontaneously, and without humbling themselves to be judged by a tribunal. The experience of mankind contradicts each of these propositions. Diverse views of the facts, and of the rules of right applicable to the facts, to say nothing of prejudice, passion, pride of opinion, are inseparable from human affairs, because they are conditions of the human mind, influencing the actions as well of men in political society as of individual men. Admit that in a majority of cases reason will prevail to prevent or to settle controversies between individual persons; but reason does not suffice in all cases, and it is for such exceptional cases that tribunals of justice exist, without which, in the attempt of men to right themselves, society would be dissolved into a state of anarchy and bloodshed. The considerations which recommend the establishment of tribunals having authority as such within the limits of each sov ereign State, are still more cogent when applied to sovereign States themselves, which, having no common superior, must of necessity determine their dif ferences by war, unless they accept the mediation of some friendly Power to restore concord between them, or unless they recur to arbitration, by mutual consent, in one form or another according to circumstances, as

the United States and Great Britain have done by the Treaty of Washington.

So many examples of arbitration between Governments, within a recent period, contribute to prove that M. Pradier Fodéré errs in assuming that in our day "offers of arbitration made and accepted are becoming more and more rare." On the contrary, this method of terminating national differences may now be regarded as permanently fixed in the international jurisprudence of Europe and America.

WISDOM OF THE PRESENT MIXED COMMISSION.

I conclude, therefore, that the United States acted wisely in submitting the claims of British subjects to a mixed commission by the Treaty of Washington.

Some persons in the United States, with disposition to criticise the Treaty of Washington, have sug gested that this Commission may result in finding a large balance of many millions due from the United States to Great Britain.

I think the supposition is altogether gratuitous, and that no such considerable balance will be found to be due. If it should be so, however, the fact will in no sort detract from the credit belonging to the Treaty. If the Government of the United States, in the course of its efforts to suppress insurrection, shall have done injury to the subjects of Great Britain for which we are justly responsible by the law of nations, it is altogether proper that we should pay whatever indemnity therefor may be found due by the judg.

ment of a lawfully constituted international tribunal, such as the present Commission.

Citizens of the United States are not slow to in voke the intervention of their Government in behalf of any American injured in the progress of civil war in other countries, and on such occasions to talk loud ly of "outrages to citizens:" let us do as we would be done by, and concede that Great Britain is entitled to judicial examination of the cases of her subjects alleging injury by the occurrences of civil war in the United States.

CHAPTER IV.

THE NORTHWESTERN BOUNDARY-LINE.

PROVISIONS OF THE TREATY.

THE Articles of the Treaty from XXXIV. to XLII. inclusive dispose of the long-standing dispute between the United States and Great Britain regarding the true water-line by which the Territory of Washington is separated from Vancouver's Island.

The subject of the controversy, and the agreement for its termination, are set forth as follows:

"Whereas it was stipulated by Article I. of the treaty concluded at Washington on the 15th of June, 1846, between the United States and Her Britannic Majesty, that the line of boundary between the territories of the United States and those of Her Britannic Majesty, from the point on the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude up to which it had already been ascertained, should be continued westward along the said parallel of north latitude 'to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and thence southerly, through the middle of the said channel and of Fuca Straits, to the Pacific Ocean;' and whereas the Commissioners appointed by the high contracting Parties to determine that portion of the boundary which runs southerly through the middle of the channel aforesaid, were unable to agree upon the same; and whereas the Government of Her Britannic Majesty claims *that such boundary-line should, under the terms of the treaty above recited, be run through the Rosario Straits, and the Government of the United States claims that it should be run through the Canal de Haro, it is agreed that the respective