The Parliamentary year was opened on the 6th of February, the Queen’s Speech being read by Commission. It promised a Ballot Bill, and Bills for organising Education in Scotland, for regulating Mines, and for improving the Licensing System. The passage in the Speech to which, however, all eyes turned was the one dealing with the _Alabama_ Claims. On this subject the country had suddenly become profoundly agitated, and from an observation in Bishop Wilberforce’s Diary we gather that the Queen, shared the popular feeling of the hour.[38] After the nation had congratulated itself on discovering a diplomatic solution of its difficulties with the American Republic, it was amazed to find that the Americans were endeavouring to seize by chicane what they had failed to gain by diplomacy. When they forwarded the case which they meant to submit to Arbitration, it was discovered that they had included in it not only a claim for the actual damage done to American commerce by the Confederate cruisers, but also the claims for the indirect or “consequential damages” which Mr. Sumner had put forward, and which the British Commissioners understood were abandoned. The sum asked under this head would have covered half the cost of the whole Civil War. It was therefore the clear opinion of the Queen that England could not consent to go into Arbitration till this preposterous demand was withdrawn. Lord Granville, on the other hand, though he inclined to this opinion, was slow to reply to a demand which he was in honour bound to promptly repel. He was chiefly concerned about saving the Washington Treaty, and he therefore sent to the American Government a mild letter requesting the withdrawal of the “indirect claims” in terms so deferentially conciliatory, that had he been dealing with a less pacific Power his despatch would probably have been answered with the cynical [Illustration: GENEVA.] _brusquerie_ that marked Von Bismarck’s dealings with him. But the country was not as meek as the Minister. There was an outburst of popular anger against the Americans for the “sharp practice” which sullied their statement of claim, and Mr. Gladstone soon saw that to go into Arbitration before the demand for “consequential damages” was withdrawn would lead to his expulsion from office. His declarations in Parliament on the subject thenceforth showed that he meant to repudiate the American interpretation of the Treaty under which the “indirect claims” had been dragged into the American case, and he spoke with the high spirit of a statesman rejecting a humiliating demand for tribute greater than conquest itself could extort. The Opposition in both Houses, on the whole, gave the Government generous support in this emergency, though Mr. Disraeli--referring to the torrent of Ministerial oratory which had deluged the recess--could not refrain in his comment on the Queen’s Speech from deriding the Cabinet for having lately lived “in a blaze of apology.”