He began with the assertion that if a refusal of the report of the committee would show that the Chamber had now changed its opinion, they had before them sufficient reason for this. He wondered that a resolution of such a nature as this had been brought forward, so soon after the unpleasant experience which the country and people of Sweden lately had in a so-called decision by arbitration. "The Chamber will please to remember," continued the speaker, "that the king, with no authority from the Riksdag, agreed with Spain to appeal to arbitration upon the difficulties that had arisen on the right understanding of the prolonged commercial treaty with Spain. Also the Chamber will please to remember that this arbitration tribunal neither acted upon the plan settled in the agreement, nor did it act in harmony with the instructions of the treaty; and what was worse, the so-called, or supposed, sentence which this one-man arbitration tribunal passed did not concern the matter, which according to the agreement was to have been settled by arbitration, but quite another, which could not reasonably be subjected to arbitration--though the matter was, so far as we were legally concerned, made to appear as though Sweden had received an injustice in the principal matter which should have been tried by arbitration, but which was not--a circumstance which, with the Spanish authorities, has greatly weakened the position in law due to Swedish citizens, whose rights have been violated in so unprecedented a manner by the mode of procedure in consequence of which arbitration was appealed to." All this had truth in it. But does that prove anything against the usefulness of arbitration clauses in treaties of commerce? The agreement referred to between the united kingdoms and Spain, January 8th, 1887, establishes:-- "A question which affects customs or the carrying out of commercial treaties, or relates to results of some special violation of the same, shall, when all attempts to come to an amicable agreement and all friendly discussions have proved fruitless, be referred to an arbitration tribunal, whose decision shall be binding on both parties." According to this it may be plainly seen, that the well-known Swedo-Spanish SPIRIT-DISPUTE, to which Mr. Hedin alluded, ought to have been solved in its entirety by arbitration. The Spanish Government, however, maintained that this affected Spanish internal concerns, since in fact the forced sale of Karlstamms-Volagets brandy stores in Spain took place as a result of a new spirit law, to which the arbitration clause in this case could not be applied.