SENATOR SUMNER’S VIEWS ON THE ALABAMA CLAIMS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 5, 25 February 1871, Page 4

SENATOR SUMNER’S VIEWS ON THE ALABAMA CLAIMS.

The correspondent of the “ New York Herald,” writing from Washington on the day of the opening of Congress, says :

Senator Sumner, with all his reported impracticability, seems, after all, to be i regarded as among the most prominent leaders of the Republican party. With regard to the recent letter of Mr Reverdy Johnson to Mr Parker, president of the Great Western Insurance Company, on the Alabama claims, Mr Sumner is of opinion that Johnson’s law points are eminently sound and well taken, especially that part which relates to the law of insurance. With reference to the right of citizens of the United States to prosecute private claims, the senator says that is a matter of expediency. If the Government has abandoned the settlement of these claims, the senator does not see why private claimants may not make application to Great Britain for their settlement. If, on the other band, the matter is still pending between the two Governments, he thinks the law of 1799, to which Mr Johnson refers, clearly bars them from any interference. The question of propriety hinges on the •point whether the Government has ceased to prosecute a settlement. On this point Mr Sumner does not agree with Mr Johnson, whose letter, however, he considers very able. Your correspondent has information from another source that the views of senator Sumner on this point are in accord with those of the President, who, instead of favoring the idea of private parties undertaking the settlement of individual claims, is desirous ot having them assumed and settled by the Government, thus making the subject of'the Alabama claims an important national question. Senator Sumner is decidedly opposed to any movement looking to a rupture with Great Britain. Of course he does not endorse General Butler’s recent belligerent speech, He thinks that there is no occasion for any difficulty with England, and that all questions between this country and Great Britain can be ainic- , ably adjusted.