MR. PRESIDENT, in concluding these remarks, I desire to say that I am no volunteer. For several years I have carefully avoided saying anything on this most irritating question, being anxious that negotiations should be left undisturbed to secure a settlement which could be accepted by a deeply injured nation. The submission of the pending treaty to the judgment of the Senate left me no alternative. It became my duty to consider it carefully in committee, and to review the whole subject. If I failed to find what we had a right to expect, and if the just claims of our country assumed unexpected proportions, it was not because I would bear hard on England, but because I wish most sincerely to remove all possibility of strife between our two countries; and it is evident that this can be done only by first ascertaining the nature and extent of difference. In this spirit I have spoken to-day. If the case against England is strong, and if our claims are unprecedented in magnitude, it is only because the conduct of this power at a trying period was most unfriendly, and the injurious consequences of this conduct were on a scale corresponding to the theatre of action. Life and property were both swallowed up, leaving behind a deep-seated sense of enormous wrong, as yet unatoned and even unacknowledged, which is one of the chief factors in the problem now presented to the statesmen of both countries. The attempt to close this great international debate without a complete settlement is little short of puerile. With the lapse of time and with minuter consideration the case against England becomes more grave, not only from the questions of international responsibility which it involves, but from better comprehension of the damages, which are seen now in their true proportions. During the war, and for some time thereafter, it was impossible to state them. The mass of a mountain cannot be measured at its base; the observer must occupy a certain distance; and this rule of perspective is justly applicable to damages which are vast beyond precedent. A few dates will show the progress of the controversy, and how the case enlarged. Going as far back as 20th November, 1862, we find our Minister in London, Mr. Adams, calling for redress from the British Government on account of the Alabama.[92] This was the mild beginning. On the 23d October, 1863, in another communication, the same Minister suggested to the British Government any “fair and equitable form of conventional arbitrament or reference.”[93] This proposition slumbered in the British Foreign Office for nearly two years, during which the Alabama was pursuing her piratical career, when, on the 30th August, 1865, it was awakened by Lord Russell only to be knocked down in these words:--