One of the three was our minister to Spain.

Spain had received him courteously as the representative of a nation with whom she was at peace.

It was like ringing the doorbell of an acquaintance, being shown into the parlor and telling him he must sell you his spoons or you would snatch them.

This doesn't incline your neighbor to like you.

But, as has been said, Mr.Adams was an American who did know how to behave, and thereby served us well in our hour of need.
We remember the Alabama and our English enemies, we forget Bright, and Cobden, and all our English friends; but Lincoln did not forget them.
When a young man, a friend of Bright's, an Englishman, had been caught here in a plot to seize a vessel and make her into another Alabama, John Bright asked mercy for him; and here are Lincoln's words in consequence: "whereas one Rubery was convicted on or about the twelfth day of October, 1863, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of California, of engaging in, and giving aid and comfort to the existing rebellion against the Government of this Country, and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, and to pay a fine of ten thousand dollars; "And whereas, the said Alfred Rubery is of the immature age of twenty years, and of highly respectable parentage; "And whereas, the said Alfred Rubery is a subject of Great Britain, and his pardon is desired by John Bright, of England; "Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, these and divers other considerations me thereunto moving, and especially as a public mark of the esteem held by the United States of America for the high character and steady friendship of the said John Bright, do hereby grant a pardon to the said Alfred Rubery, the same to begin and take effect on the twentieth day of January 1864, on condition that he leave the country within thirty days from and after that date." Thus Lincoln, because of Bright; and because of a word from Bright to Charles Sumner about the starving cotton-spinners, Americans sent from New York three ships with flour for those faithful English friends of ours.
And then, at Geneva in 1872, England paid us for what the Alabama had done.