The
injuries resulting to the United States by reason of the course adopted
by Great Britain during our late civil war--in the increased rates
of insurance; in the diminution of exports and imports, and other
obstructions to domestic industry and production; in its effect upon the
foreign commerce of the country; in the decrease and transfer to Great
Britain of our commercial marine; in the prolongation of the war and the
increased cost (both in treasure and in lives) of its suppression--could
not be adjusted and satisfied as ordinary commercial claims, which
continually arise between commercial nations; and yet the convention
treated them simply as such ordinary claims, from which they differ more
widely in the gravity of their character than in the magnitude of their
amount, great even as is that difference. Not a word was found in the
treaty, and not an inference could be drawn from it, to remove the sense
of the unfriendliness of the course of Great Britain in our struggle for
existence, which had so deeply and universally impressed itself upon the
people of this country.
Believing that a convention thus misconceived in its scope and
inadequate in its provisions would not have produced the hearty, cordial
settlement of pending questions, which alone is consistent with the
relations which I desire to have firmly established between the United
States and Great Britain, I regarded the action of the Senate in
rejecting the treaty to have been wisely taken in the interest of peace
and as a necessary step in the direction of a perfect and cordial
friendship between the two countries.
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