pelled by sails and guided by a rudder, in which he maintained that man could navigate the air as well as he could navigate the ocean in a ship."

The authorities of the French Republic took advantage of the request for Genêt's recall to ask for Morris's withdrawal. Under the circumstances, this act of reciprocity was ungrudgingly conceded. Morris was succeeded in France by James Monroe.

The Neutrality Act of 1794, though originally limited in duration, was afterwards extended, and was then continued in force indefinitely. In order to meet conditions arising out of the war of the Spanish colonies in America for independence, an additional act was passed in 1817; but this, together with all prior legislation on the subject, was superseded by the comprehensive statute of April 20, 1818, the provisions of which are now embodied in the Revised Statutes of the United States. A similar act was passed by the British Parliament in the following year; laws and regulations were from time to time adopted by other governments; and the duties of neutrality became a fixed and determinate part of international law. The severest test of the system, as the ultimate standard of national obligation and responsibility, was made in the case of the claims of the United States against Great Britain generically known as the "Alabama Claims," growing out of the depredations of the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers fitted out in British ports

during the American civil war. The government of the United States, in demanding indemnities for these depredations, could point to the precedent of 1793; but in the case of the Alabama claims the amounts involved were enormous, and the British government besides denied that it had been guilty of any neglect. By the treaty of Washington, of May 8, 1871, the question was submitted to arbitration at Geneva. The treaty declared that a neutral government was bound to use "due diligence" in the performance of its duties. The tribunal found that there had been negligence on the part of the British authorities in respect of three of the cruisers -the Alabama, the Florida, and the Shenandoah after she left Melbourne-and awarded the United States $15,500,000. For the depredations of the French privateers in 1793 the United States paid to the subjects of Great Britain $143,428.11. The amount was relatively small, but its payment, on considerations of international obligation and good faith, established a principle incalculably important, and, like the seed received into good ground, brought forth a hundredfold, and even more.

It is perhaps not generally known that the Alabama, in spite of the omission of the English customs authorities to seize her, might in the end have been detained but for an act of wifely devotion. On the 22d and 24th of July, 1862, evidence directly inculpating the vessel was communicated by the Amer

Fifteen million

five

hundred thousand dollars.

0.

Have been deposited with the Treasurer of the United States Ne

Payable in

GOLD

At his Office.

DREXEL, MORGANO CO. MORTON BLISS & CO. JAY COOKE& Co, or their order..

Washington, September, 9th 1873.

Approved. William A. Richardson

Secretary of the Treasury. {

Whn Allison

Register of the Tronury.

FACSIMILE OF COIN CERTIFICATE WITH WHICH THE GENEVA AWARD WAS PAID

ican legation in London to the British Foreign Office. On the 23d and 26th of July the papers were referred to the law officers of the crown, and, as the law officers had no permanent office, were sent as usual to the senior officer, who was then Sir John Dorney Harding, Queen's Advocate, his associates being Sir William Atherton, Attorney-General, and Sir Roundell Palmer, afterwards Lord Selborne, Solicitor-General. Unfortunately, Sir John Harding had just then fallen a victim to an acute mental disorder, which proved to be fatal, but which his wife, in the hope that it would soon pass away, had kept a secret. Upon the decision to be rendered by the law officers there hung, perchance, the issues of peace and war and the fate of nations; but the papers lay unexamined at Sir John's residence apparently till the 28th of July, when the Foreign Office, growing anxious at the delay, but ignorant of its cause, took steps to recover them and placed them in the hands of Sir William Atherton. On the evening of the same day, Sir William, perceiving the gravity of the situation, which the papers disclosed, called Sir Roundell Palmer into consultation upon them in the Earl Marshal's room in the House of Lords. They at once agreed that the vessel must be seized. An opinion to that effect was delivered to Earl Russell on the morning of the 29th of July; but during the night of the 28th, the Alabama, as if conscious of what was impending, left the docks in which she had been lying. At ten

o'clock on the morning of the 29th she put to sea. The order of the Foreign Office to detain her reached Liverpool in the afternoon.

The government of the United States, in 1793, had barely entered upon the performance of the duties of neutrality when it was swept into the vortex of the great struggle, which was to last almost unbroken for more than twenty years, for the maintenance of neutral rights. In this momentous contest there was involved the ever-recurrent question, which will continue in some form to arise as long as wars are waged, as to how far neutral powers are required to subordinate the interests of their commerce to the hostile interests of belligerents. That powers at peace were entitled to trade with powers at war was not denied, but the rule was subject to exceptions. It was admitted that a belligerent might cut off all trade with the enemy's ports by blockading them, and might also prohibit the carriage of contraband to the enemy. For entering or attempting to enter a blockaded port, the penalty was confiscation of vessel and cargo, while the carriage of contraband entailed the loss of the prohibited articles and the freight, if nothing more. There was, however, no precise and general agreement either as to what constituted a blockade, or as to what articles were to be considered as contraband. If blockades could be legally established merely by decrees on paper, without the application