or

H. B. M. Minister of Charge' & 'Affaires at Washingles

and Acting Consul Generalat

Acting

New Bak!

Morton

ar

Pay to the Order of Hamilton Fisk Secretary of State

Eles Thornton

F. B. his. Miurater.

El Archibald

It B. M. Consul General

No. 1.

Have been deposited with the Treasurer of the United States No.1.

Payable in

GOLD

At his Office.

tion extending beyond the limits of the two nations and of the time and generation in which it was performed.1

Payment of the
Award.

By Article VIII. of the treaty the sum awarded by the tribunal was required to be "paid in coin by the Government of Great Britain to the Government of the United States within twelve months after the date of the award." The award thus became payable in Washington on or before September 14, 1873, and in course of time there was much conjecture as to how so large an amount of coin would be obtained and transferred. In the end the payment was made without actually turning into the Treasury any coin whatever. The Treasury Department was then engaged, under the funding act of July 14, 1870, in calling in 6 per cent bonds for redemption; and in order to facilitate this operation it had established an agency in London, in charge of two of its own officers, for the purpose of receiving any called bonds and matured coupons held in Europe, as many of them were. On the 30th of May 1873 the British Government entered into a contract with certain bankers, by which the latter agreed to provide the sum of $15,500,000 so that it should be available in gold coin in Washington on the 10th of the next September, either by deposits of coin in a prescribed manner or by the purchase of bonds called for redemption in gold coin in Washington on before the 13th of September. On the 6th of June 1873 the Secretary of the Treasury issued a call for the redemption of $20,000,000 of five-twenty bonds of the loan of 1862 on the 6th of the ensuing September. In due time the bankers began to buy the bonds and pay for them, and as they turned them over to the United States they received in return coin certificates either of the Treasury at Washington or of the subtreasury at New York. By the 6th of September they had obtained sixty-eight such certificates, aggregating the precise amount of the award. All that now remained to be done was to transfer the certificates through the British Government to the United States; and in order to facilitate this transaction the Treasury prepared a single coin certificate for $15,500,000, payable to the order of the bankers, in exchange for the sixty-eight certificates previously issued. This certificate the bankers indorsed to the joint order of the British minister or chargé d'affaires at Washington and the British consul-general at New York. Duly indorsed by these

officials to the order of Mr. Fish, as Secretary of State, it was delivered to the latter on the 9th of September. By Mr. Fish it was indorsed over to the Secretary of the Treasury, and the payment was complete.1

We give here a facsimile of the certificate and its indorsements. By an act of Congress of March 3, 1873,2 it was provided that immediately upon the payment of the award the money should "be paid into the Treasury, and used to redeem, so far as it may, the public debt of the United States," and that an "amount equal to the debt so redeemed" should be "invested in the 5 per cent registered bonds of the United States, to be held subject to the future disposition of Congress," the object being to secure for the time being the advantage to be derived from substituting bonds drawing 5 per cent interest for outstanding obligations drawing 6 per cent. In execution of this provision the Secretary of the Treasury, when the coin certificate of $15,500,000 was delivered to him, issued to Mr. Fish a single bond of the funded loan for the whole amount. This bond, there being none engraved of the requisite denomination, was "elegantly written out with a pen, in exact similitude, ornamentation and all, with the engraved bonds of the same loan." A facsimile is here given of the face of the bond.

Expenses of the
Arbitration.

The total expenses of the arbitration amounted, on the part of the United States, to the sum of $249,168.41. This included the remuneration of counsel, who received $10,000 each, and expenses. It was held by the Court of Claims that the accounting officers of the Treasury possessed no authority to charge the expenses of the arbitration to the Alabama fund and deduct them from the awards rendered in favor of claimants by the Court of Commissioners of Alabama Claims.*

Three Rules.

By Article VI. of the Treaty of Washington Failure to Request the high contracting parties agreed not only Accession to the to observe the three rules as between themselves in future, but also "to bring them to the knowledge of other maritime powers, and to invite them to accede to them." We have seen, however, that before the

H. Ex. Doc. 140, 44 Cong. 1 sess; Hackett's Geneva Award Acts, 175. 217 Stats. at L. 601.

3 Mr. Richardson, ex-Secretary of the Treasury, to Mr. Hackett, June 22, 1882, Hackett's Geneva Award Acts, 178.

4 Weld v. United States, 23 Court of Claims, 126.