'In the diplomatic correspondence, as to the "Alabama" and other subjects of complaint by the United States, Lord Russell stood firmly upon the ground that Great Britain had not failed in any duty of neutrality; and Lord Lyons, the sagacious Minister who then represented this country at Washington, thought there would be much more danger to our future relations with the United States in any departure from that position than in strict and steady adherence to it. But no sooner was the war ended than new currents of opinion set in. In a debate on the subject in the House of Commons on March 6, 1868, Lord Stanley (then Foreign Secretary), who had never been of the same mind about it with his less cautious friends, said that a "tendency might be detected to be almost too ready to accuse ourselves of faults we had not committed, and to assume that on every doubtful point the decision ought to be against us." The sequel is well known. The Conservative Government consented to refer to arbitration, not all the questions raised by the Government of the United States, but those arising out of the ships alleged to have been equipped or to have received augmentation of force within the British dominions for the war service of the Confederate States; and from that concession no other Government could recede. For a long time the Government or the Senate of the United States objected to any reference so limited, and to the last they refused to go into an open arbitration. They made it a condition, that new Rules should be formulated, not only for future observance, but for retrospective application to their own claims. This condition, unprecedented and open in principle to the gravest objections, was accepted for the sake of peace with a nation so nearly allied to us; not, however, without an express declaration, on the face of the Treaty of Washington, that the British Government could not assent to those new Rules as a statement of principles of international law which were in force when the claims arose.