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.