reeable to the Government of the
United States as third Commissioner. . . . _Lord Granville desired me
to ask you in his name that you would consent to the appointment of
the Belgian Minister_, who, as he believes, would be in all respects
a suitable person for the position."

Mr. Fish was utterly astounded by this proposition submitted by Sir
Edward Thornton and coming almost as a personal and pressing request
from Lord Granville. The one Minister who was regarded as especially
disqualified by Mr. Maurice Delfosse, the representative of Belgium at
Washington. The disqualification did not convey a personal reflection
upon that gentleman, but was based upon the relations of his government
to the Government of Great Britain. The Kingdom of Belgium owed its
origin to the armed interposition of Great Britain, and its
continuance, to her friendship and her favor. Its first monarch
Leopold, who had been but five years dead when the Treaty of
Washington was negotiated, had married the Princess Charlotte, daughter
of the Price-Regent of England; he was brother to Queen Victoria's
mother, and to Prince Albert's father; he held the rank of Marshal in
the British Army, and had been for a long period in receipt of an
annual allowance of fifty thousand pounds from the British Exchequer.
He was on terms of the most affectionate friendship with the Queen and
was her constant and confidential adviser.

His son and successor Leopold II., the reigning monarch, cousin of
Queen Victoria, had married an Austrian princess, and the unfortunate
Carlotta, widow the Emperor Maximilian, was his sister. The House of
Hapsburg associated the American support of the Mexican President
Juarez with the death of Maximilian, and might not be well disposed
towards the Government of the United States. It was not therefore an
altogether happy circumstance that the Austrian Ambassador in London
had been designated as the person to choose a third Commissioner, in
the event of the British and American Governments failing to agree in
his selection. A sense of honest dealing at the outset had plainly
suggested the ineligibility of a Belgian subject to the third
Commissionership, and suggested also the impropriety of leaving to the
Austrian Ambassador in London the selection of the Commissioner. The
narrative will show that the British Government had determined upon the
one or the other, and in the end accomplished both.

The reply of Mr. Fish to Sir Ed