any case he submitted to Seward a draft despatch making the ill-judged proposal of arbitration. He gave way to Seward, but at the Cabinet meeting on Christmas Eve, at which Seward submitted a despatch yielding to the British demand, it is reported that Lincoln, as well as Chase and others, was at first reluctant to agree, and that it was Bates and Seward that persuaded the Cabinet to a just and necessary surrender. This was the last time that there was serious friction in the actual intercourse of the two Governments. The lapse of Great Britain in allowing the famous _Alabama_ to sail was due to delay and misadventure ("week-ends" or the like) in the proceedings of subordinate officials, and was never defended, and the numerous minor controversies that arose, as well as the standing disagreement as to the law of blockade never reached the point of danger. For all this great credit was due to Lord Lyons and to C. F. Adams, and to Seward also, when he had a little sobered down, but it might seem as if the credit commonly given to Lincoln by Americans rested on little but the single happy performance with the earlier despatch which has been mentioned. Adams and Lyons were not aware of his beneficent influence--the papers of the latter contain little reference to him beyond a kindly record of a trivial conversation, at the end of which, as the Ambassador was going for a holiday to England, the President said, "Tell the English people I mean them no harm." Yet it is evident that Lincoln's supporters in America, the writer of the Biglow Papers, for instance, ascribed to him a wise, restraining power in the _Trent_ dispute. What is more, Lincoln later claimed this for himself. Two or three years later, in one of the confidences with which he often startled men who were but slight acquaintances, but who generally turned out worthy of confidence, he exclaimed with emphatic self-satisfaction, "Seward knows that I am his master," and recalled with satisfaction how he had forced Seward to yield to England in the _Trent_ affair. It would have been entirely unlike him to claim praise when it was wholly undue to him; we find him, for example, writing to Fox, of the Navy Department, about "a blunder which was probably in part mine, and certainly was not yours"; so that a puzzling question arises here. It is quite possible that Lincoln, who did not press his proposal of arbitration, really manoeuvred Seward and the Cabinet into full acceptance of the British demands by making them see the consequences of any other action. It is also, however, likely enough that, being, as he was, interested in arbitration generally, he was too inexperienced to see the inappropriateness of the proposal in this case. If so, we may none the less credit him with having forced Seward to work for peace and friendly relations with Great Britain, and made that minister the agent, more skilful than himself, of a peaceful resolution which in its origin was his own.