"LONDON, _24th February, 1872_. "_My dear Mr. Colfax,_--Having read this morning a brief telegraphic summary of the speech which you delivered at Brooklyn on Washington's Birthday, I feel constrained to address you on the subject upon which you have spoken with so much emphasis. I refer to the Treaty of Washington. I share your opinion that neither nation will dare, in the face of civilization, to destroy the treaty; but nevertheless the crisis is a grave one. It therefore behooves every one who can assist to bring about a better understanding on the points of difference between the two countries to make his contribution to that end. This is my apology for addressing you. "The grave misunderstanding which has arisen between Great Britain and the United States is due to the widely different manner in which the Treaty of Washington has been from the outset interpreted by the two nations. I have not met a single person on this side of the Atlantic who expresses any desire "to back out" of the treaty, or refuse the fulfilment of any one of the obligations which it is believed to impose; nay, more, my conviction is that if the British people were satisfied that the principle of referring vague and indefinite claims to arbitration had somehow or other crept into the treaty, they yet would, while passing emphatic votes of censure on their representatives at Washington, at the same time never dream of calling back the pledge which Lord Ripon and his colleagues had given on their behalf. "The excitement which followed the publication of the American case was occasioned by the belief--universal among all classes of the English people--that their own interpretation of the treaty was the right one, and that indeed no other interpretation had ever been or would be given to it. It is desirable that Americans should remember this fact--that until the publication of the American case nobody on this side of the water had the remotest idea that the Washington Treaty contemplated more than arbitration with reference to the direct losses inflicted by the _Alabama_ and other Confederate cruisers which escaped from British ports during our civil war. This is not a matter of surmise; it is demonstrable on the clearest evidence. I therefore contend that whether the public sentiment of England be well founded or not, its existence is so natural that even if we Americans are wholly in the right we ought to make every allowance for it--in fact, treat it with generous forbearance.