“The prices of adjudication have been 100,000 muskets at $9.30; 40,000 at $12.30; 100,000 at $12.25; 50,000,000 cartridges at $16.30 the thousand: altogether, with the commission to Remington and the incidental expenses, more than four million dollars.” Such gigantic purchases, made at one time, or in the space of a few days, could have but one destination. It is weakness to imagine otherwise. Obviously, plainly, unquestionably, they were for the disarmed belligerent. The telegraph each morning proclaimed the constant fearful struggle, and we all became daily spectators. In the terrible blaze, filling the heavens with lurid flame, it was impossible not to see the exact condition of the two belligerents,--Germany always victorious, France still rallying for the desperate battle. But the officials of the Ordnance Bureau saw this as plainly as the people. Therefore were they warned, so that every applicant for arms and war material on a large scale was open to just suspicion. These officials were put on their guard as much as if a notice or _caveat_ had been filed at the War Department. In neglecting that commanding notice, in overruling that unprecedented _caveat_, so far as to allow these enormous supplies to be forwarded to the disarmed belligerent, they failed in that proper care required by the occasion. If I said that they failed in good faith, I should only give the conclusion of law on unquestionable facts. In the case of the _Gran Para_, Chief-Justice Marshall, after exposing an attempt to evade our neutral obligations by an ingenious cover, exclaimed, in words which he borrowed from an earlier period of our history, but which have been often quoted since: “This would, indeed, be a fraudulent neutrality, disgraceful to our own Government, and of which no nation would be the dupe.”[7] I forbear at present to apply these memorable words, which show with what indignant language our great Chief-Justice blasted an attempt to evade our neutral obligations. In calling it fraudulent he was not deterred by the petty cry of a false patriotism, that his judgment might affect the good name of our country. Full well he knew that national character could suffer only where fraud is maintained.