ours.

And then, at Geneva in 1872, England paid us for what the Alabama had
done. This Court of Arbitration grew slowly; suggested first by Mr.
Thomas Batch to Lincoln, who thought the millennium wasn't quite at hand
but favored "airing the idea." The idea was not aired easily. Cobden
would have brought it up in Parliament, but illness and death overtook
him. The idea found but few other friends. At last Horace Greeley "aired"
it in his paper. On October 23, 1863, Mr. Adams said to Lord John
Russell, "I am directed to say that there is no fair and equitable form
of conventional arbitrament or reference to which the United States will
not be willing to submit." This, some two years later, Russell recalled,
saying in reply to a statement of our grievances by Adams: "It appears to
Her Majesty's Government that there are but two questions by which the
claim of compensation could be tested; the one is, Have the British
Government acted with due diligence, or, in other words, in good faith
and honesty, in the maintenance of the neutrality they proclaimed? The
other is, Have the law officers of the Crown properly understood the
foreign enlistment act, when they declined, in June 1862, to advise the
detention and seizure of the Alabama, and on other occasions when they
were asked to detain other ships, building or fitting in British ports?
It appears to Her Majesty's Government that neither of these questions
could be put to a foreign government with any regard to the dignity and
character of the British Crown and the British Nation. Her Majesty's
Government are the sole guardians of their own honor. They cannot admit
that they have acted with bad faith in maintaining the neutrality they
professed. The law officers of the Crown must be held to be better
interpreters of a British statute than any foreign Government can be
presumed to be..." He consented to a commission, but drew the line at
any probing of England's good faith.