The English arguments, so far as argument can be found in the recent heats, have not in any respect impaired the justice of our complaint. Loudly it is said that there can be no sentimental damages, or damages for wounded feelings; and then our case is dismissed, as having nothing but this foundation. Now, without undertaking to say that there is no remedy in the case supposed, I wish it understood that our complaint is for damages traced directly to England. If the amount is unprecedented, so also is the wrong. The scale of damages is naturally in proportion to the scale of operations. Who among us doubts that these damages were received? Call them what you please, to this extent the nation lost. The records show how our commerce suffered, and witnesses without number testify how the blockade was broken and the war prolonged. Ask any of our great generals,--ask Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, Meade, Burnside,--ask Grant. In view of this transcendent wrong, it is a disparagement of International Law to say that there is no remedy. An eminent English judge once pronounced from the bench that “the law is astute to find a remedy”; but no astuteness is required in this case,--nothing but simple justice, which is always the object of a true diplomacy. How did the nation suffer? To what extent? These are the practical questions. No technicality can be set up on either side. _Damages_ are _damages_, no matter by what artificial term they may be characterized. Opposing them as _consequential_ shows the disposition to escape by technicality, even while confessing an equitable liability,--since England is bound for _all the consequences_ of her conduct, bound under International Law, which is a Law of Equity always, and bound, no matter how the damages occurred, _always provided they proceeded from her_. Because the damages are national, because all suffered instead of one, this is no reason for immunity on her part. Then it is said, “Why not consider our good friends in England, and especially those noble working-men who stood by us so bravely?” We do consider them always, and give them gratitude for their generous alliance. They belong to what our own poet has called “the nobility of labor.” But they are not England. We trace no damages to them, nor to any class, high or low, but to England, corporate England, through whose Government we suffered. Then, again, it is said, “Why not exhibit an account against France?” For the good reason, that, while France erred with England in recognition of Rebel belligerence, no pirate ships or blockade-runners were built under shelter of this recognition to prey upon our commerce. The two cases are wide asunder, and they are distinguished by two different phrases of the Common Law. The recognition of Rebel belligerence in France was wrong without injury; but that same recognition in England was wrong with injury, and it is of this unquestionable injury that we complain.