Robert C. Schenck to Granville Leveson-Gower, June 6, 1872

General Schenck to Earl Granville.

My Lord: In the conversation we had yesterday, and which was resumed this morning, you stated to me that Her Majesty’s Government have always thought the language proposed by them in the draught Article, as it stands, sufficient for the purpose of removing and putting an end to all demand on the part of the United States in respect to those indirect claims which they put forth in their Case at Geneva, and to the admissibility of which Her Majesty’s Government have objected; but that there were those who doubted whether the terms used were explicit enough to make that perfectly clear, and to prevent those same claims from being put forward again. I concurred with you in your view as to the sufficiency of the language used in that clause of the proposed Article, and which the Government of the United States had accepted; and I repelled the idea that anybody should think it possible that the Government of the United States, if they should yield those claims for a consideration in a settlement between the two countries, would seek to bring them up in the future, or would insist that they were still before the Arbitrators for their consideration.

I am now authorized, in a telegraphic dispatch received to-day from Mr. Fish, to say that the Government of the United States regards the new rule contained in the proposed Article as the consideration for, and to be accepted as, a final settlement of the three classes of the indirect claims put forth in the Case of the United States to which the Government of Great Britain have objected.

I have the honor to be, with the highest consideration, my Lord, your Lordship’s most obedient servant,