future negotiation, upon terms of equality, and the striking out of that reservation was but a mutual and reciprocal and equal release from the obligation further to negotiate. This much for the reciprocity of these obligations as derived from the action of the sovereign powers themselves. that not only the American government, but the American negotiators, treated these obligations under the treaty as, in all respects, mutual, reciprocal, and equal; and if the fallacy of the argument that the United States had obtained to itself a valuable consideration for the release of these private claims in the release of itself from these obligations, was not utterly and entirely disproved by these facts? Was not the release of the obligations on the one side the release of them on the other? And was not the one re How, then, could it be said, with any justice, that we sought our release at the expense of the claimants? There was no reasonable ground for such an allegation, either from the acts of our government or of our negotiators. When the latter fixed a value upon our obligations as to the privateers and prizes, and as to the guaranty, in the same article they fixed the same price, to a franc, upon the reciprocal obligations of France; and when the former discharged our liability, by expunging the second article of the treaty of 1800, the same act discharged the corresponding liability of the French government. "What was to be learned from the action of their respective negotiators? He did not doubt but that attempts had been made on the part of France to exhibit an inequality in the obligations under the treaty, and to set up that ine-lease the necessary consideration for the other? quality against the claims of our citizens; but had our negotiators ever admitted the inequality to exist, or ever attempted to compromise the rights of the claimants under this bill for such a consideration? He could not find that they had. He did not hear it contended that they had: and, from the evidence of their acts, remaining upon record, as a part of the diplomatic correspondence of the period, he could not suppose they had ever entertained the idea. He had said that the American negotiators had always treated these obligations as mutual, reciprocal, and equal; and he now proposed to read to the Senate a part of a letter from Messrs. Ellsworth, Davie, and Murray, addressed to the French negotiators, and containing the project of a treaty, to justify his assertion. The letter was dated 20th August, 1800, and it would be | recollected that its authors were the negotiators, on the part of the United States, of the treaty of the 30th of September, 1800. The ex tract is as follows: "1. Let it be declared that the former treaties are renewed and confirmed, and shall have the same effect as if no misunderstanding between the two powers had intervened, except so far as they are derogated from by the present treaty. "2. It shall be optional with either party to pay to the other, within seven years, three millions of francs, in money or securities which may be issued for indemnities, and thereby to reduce the rights of the other as to privateers and prizes, to those of the most favored nation. And during the said term allowed for option, the right of both parties shall be limited by the line of the most favored nation. 3. The mutual guaranty in the treaty of alliance shall be so specified and limited, that its future obligation shall be, on the part of France, when the United States shall be attacked, to furnish and deliver at her own ports military stores to the amount of one million of francs; and, on the part of the United States, when the French possessions in America, in any future war, shall be attacked, to furnish and deliver at their own ports a like amount in provisions. It shall, moreover, be optional for either party to exonerate itself wholly of its obligation, by paying to the other, within seven years, a gross sum of five millions of francs, in money, or such securities as may be issued for indemnities.' "Mr. W. asked if he needed further proofs 66 Here, then, Mr. W. said, must end all pretence of a valuable consideration for these claims passing to the United States from this source. The onerous obligations were mutual, reciprocal, and equal, and the respective releases were mutual, reciprocal, and equal, and simultaneous, and nothing could be fairly drawn from the act which operated these mutual releases to benefit these claimants. "Mr. W. said he was, then, necessarily brought back to the proposition with which he started in the commencement of his argument, that, if the United States were liable to pay these claimants, that liability must rest upon the broad ground of a failure by the government, after ordinary, and, in this instance, extraordinary efforts to collect the money. The idea of a release of the claims for a valuable consideration passing to the government had been exploded, and, if a liability was to be claimed on account of a failure to collect the money, upon what ground did it rest? What had the gov ernment done to protect the rights of these claimants? It had negotiated from 1793 to 1798, with a vigilance and zeal and talent almost unprecedented in the history of diplomacy. It had sent to France minister after minister, and, upon several occasions, extraordinary missions composed of several individuals. Between 1798 and 1800, it had equipped fleets and armies, expended millions in warlike preparation, and finally sent forth its citizens to battle and death, to force the payment of the claims. Were we now to be told, that our failure in these efforts had created a liability against us to pay the money? That the same citizens who had been taxed to pay the expenses of these long negotiations, and of this war for the claims, were to be further taxed to pay such of the claims as we had failed to col lect? He could never consent to such a deduction from such premises. But, Mr. President, said Mr. W., there is another view of this subject, placed upon this basis, which renders this bill of trifling imporIf the failure to tance in the comparison. collect these claims has created the liability to pay them, that liability goes to the extent of the claims proved, and the interest upon them, not to a partial, and perhaps trifling, dividend. Who, then, would undertake to say what amount of claims might not be proved during the state of things he had described, from the breaking out of the war between France and England, in 1793, to the execution of the treaty, in 1800? For a great portion of the period, the municipal regulations of France required the captured cargoes to be not confiscated, but paid for at the market value at the port to which the vessel was destined. Still the capture would be proved, the value of the cargo ascertained, before the commission which the bill proposes to establish; and who would adduce the proof that the same cargo was paid for by the French government? "This principle, however, Mr. W. said, went much further than the whole subject of the old French claims. It extended to all claims for spoliations upon our commerce, since the existence of the government, which we had failed to collect. Who could say where the liability would end? In how many cases had claims of this character been settled by treaty, what had been collected in each case, and what amount remained unpaid, after the release of the foreign government? He had made an unsuccessful effort to answer these inquiries, so far as the files of the state department would furnish the information, as he had found that it could only be collected by an examination of each individual claim; and this would impose a labor upon the department of an unreasonable character, and would occupy more time than remained to furnish the information for his use upon the present occasion. He had, however, been favored by the Secretary of State with the amounts allowed by the commissioners, the amounts paid, and the rate of pay upon the principal, in two recent cases, the Florida treaty, and the treaty with Denmark. In the former instance, the payment was ninety-one and two thirds per centum upon the principal, while in the latter it was but thirty-one and one eighth per centum. Assume that these two cases are the maximum and minimum of all the cases where releases have been given for partial payments; and he begged the Senate to reflect upon the amounts unpaid which might be called from the national treasury, if the principle were once admitted that a failure to collect creates a liability to pay. "That in his assumption that a liability of this sort must go to the whole amount of the claims, he only took the ground contended for by the friends of this bill, he would trouble the | Senate with another extract from the report of "The only remaining inquiry is the amount; "1. The actual loss sustained by the peti- "The first is the one demanded by strict "The committee could not believe that the amount of compensation to the sufferers should be calculated by the advantages secured to the If the property United States, because it was not, according to their ideas, the true measure. of an individual be taken for public use, and the government miscalculate, and find that the object to which they have applied it has been injurious rather than beneficial, the value of the property is still due to the owner, who ought not to suffer for the false speculations which have been made. A turnpike or canal may be very unproductive; but the owner of the land which has been taken for its construction is not the less entitled to its value. On the other hand, he can have no manner of right to more than the value of his property, be the object to which it has been applied ever so beneficial.' "Here, Mr. W. said, were two proposed grounds of estimating the extent of the liability of the government to the claimants; and that which graduated it by the value received by the government was distinctly rejected, while that making the amount of the claims the measure of liability, was as distinctly asserted to be the true and just standard. He hoped he had shown, to the satisfaction of the Senate, that the former rule of value received by the government would allow the claimants nothing at all, while he was compelled to say that, upon the broad principle that a failure to collect creates a liability to pay, he could not controvert the correctness of the conclusion that the liability must be commensurate with the claim. He could controvert, he 1 thought, successfully, the principle, but he could not the measure of damages when the principle was conceded. He would here conclude his remarks upon the points he had noticed, by the earnest declaration that he believed the passage of this bill would open more widely the doors of the public treasury than any legislation of which he had any knowledge, or to which Congress had ever yielded its assent. "Mr. W. said he had a few observations to offer relative to the mode of legislation proposed, and to the details of the bill, and he would trouble the Senate no further. "His first objection, under this head, was to the mode of legislation. If the government be liable to pay these claims, the claimants are citizens of the country, and Congress is as accessible to them as to other claimants who have demands against the treasury. Why were they not permitted, individually, to apply to Congress to establish their respective claims, as other claimants were bound to do, and to receive such relief, in each case, as Congress, in its wisdom, should see fit to grant? Why were these claims, more than others, grouped together, and attempted to be made a matter of national importance? Why was a commission to be established to ascertain their validity, a duty in ordinary cases discharged by Congress itself? Were the Senate sure that much of the importance given to these claims had not proceeded from this association, and from the formidable amount thus presented at one view? Would any gentleman be able to convince himself that, acting upon a single claim in this immense mass, he should have given it his favorable consideration? For his part, he considered the mode of legislation unusual and objectionable. His principal objections to the details were, that the second section of the bill prescribed the rules which should govern the commission in deciding upon the claims, among which the former treaties between the United States and France' were enumerated; and that the bill contained no declaration that the payments made under it were in full of the claims, or that the respective claimants should execute a release, as a condition of receiving their dividends. "The first objection was predicated upon the fact that the bill covered the whole period from the making of the treaties of 1778, to that of the 30th September, 1800, and made the former treaties the rule of adjudication, when Congress on the 7th July, 1798, by a deliberate legislative act, declared those treaties void, and no longer binding upon the United States or their citizens. It is a fact abundantly proved by the documents, that a large portion of the claims now to be paid, arose within the period last alluded to; and that treaties declared to be void should be made the law in determining what were and what were not illegal captures, during the time that they were held to have no force, and when our citizens were authorized by law to go upon the high seas, regardless of their provisions, Mr. W. said, would seem to him to be an absurdity which the Senate would not legalize. He was fully aware that the first section of the bill purported to provide for 'valid claims to indemnity upon the French government, arising out of illegal captures, detentions, forcible seizures, illegal condemnations, and confiscations;' but it could not be overlooked that illegal captures, condemnations, and confiscations, must relate entirely to the law which was to govern the adjudication; and if that law was a void treaty which the claimants were not bound to observe, and did not observe, was it not more than possible that a capture, condemnation, or confiscation, might, by compulsion, be adjudged illegal under the rule fixed by the bill, while that same capture, condemnation, or confiscation, was strictly legal under the laws which governed the commerce of the claimant when the capture was made? He must say that it appeared clear to his mind that the rule of adjudication upon the validity of claims of this description, should, in all cases, be the same rule which governed the commerce out of which the claims have arisen. "His second objection, Mr. W. said, was made more as a wish that a record of the intentions of the present Congress should be preserved upon the face of the bill, than from any idea that the provision suggested would afford the least protection to the public treasury. Every day's legislation showed the futility of the insertion in an act of Congress of a declaration that the appropriation made should be in full of a claim; and in this, as in other like cases, should this bill pass, he did not expect that it would be, in practice, any thing more than an instalment upon the claims which would be sustained before the commission. The files of the state department would contain the record evidence of the balance, with the admission of the government, in the passage of this bill, that an equal liability remained to pay that balance, whatever it might be. Even a release from the respective claimants he should consider as likely to have no other effect than to change their future applications from a demand of legal right, which they now assume to have, to one of equity and favor; and he was yet to see that the latter would not be as successful as the former. He must give his vote against the bill, whether modified in that particular or not, and he should do so under the most full and clear conviction, that it was a proposition fraught with greater dangers to the public treasury, than any law which had ever yet received the assent of Congress." CHAPTER CXIX. "Another objection, sir, has been urged against these claims, well calculated to diminish the favor with which they might otherwise be received, and which is without any substantial foundation in fact. It is, that a great portion of them has been bought up, as a matter of speculation, and it is now holden by these purchasers. It has even been said, I think, on the floor of the Senate, that nine tenths, or ninety hundredths, of all the claims are owned by speculators. "Such unfounded statements are not only wholly unjust towards these petitioners themselves, but they do great mischief to other interests. I have observed that a French gentleman of distinction, formerly a resident in this country, is represented in the public newspapers as having declined the offer of a seat in the French ad FRENCH SPOLIATIONS-MR. WEBSTER'S SPEECH. "THE question, sir, involved in this case, is essentially a judicial question. It is not a question of public policy, but a question of private right; a question between the government and the petitioners: and, as the government is to be judge in its own case, it would seem to be the duty of its members to examine the subject with the most scrupulous good faith, and the most solicitous desire to do justice. "There is a propriety in commencing the ex-ministration, on the ground that he could not amination of these claims in the Senate, because it was the Senate which, by its amendment of the treaty of 1800, and its subsequent ratification of that treaty, and its recognition of the declaration of the French government, effectually released the claims as against France, and for ever cut off the petitioners from all hopes of redress from that quarter. The claims, as claims against our own government, have their foundation in these acts of the Senate itself; and it may certainly be expected that the Senate will consider the effects of its own proceedings, on private rights and private interests, with that candor and justice which belong to its high char acter. "It ought not to be objected to these petitioners, that their claim is old, or that they are now reviving any thing which has heretofore been abandoned. There has been no delay which is not reasonably accounted for. The treaty by which the claimants say their claims on France for these captures and confiscations were released was concluded in 1800. They immediately applied to Congress for indemnity, as will be seen by the report made in 1802, in the House of Representatives, by a committee of which a distinguished member from Virginia, not now living [Mr. Giles], was chairman. "In 1807, on the petition of sundry merchants and others, citizens of Charleston, in South Carolina, a committee of the House of Representatives, of which Mr. Marion, of that State, was chairman, made a report, declaring that the committee was of opinion that the government of the United States was bound to indemnify the claimants. But at this time our affairs with the European powers at war had become exceedingly embarrassed; our government had felt itself compelled to withdraw our commerce from the ocean; and it was not until after the conclusion of the war of 1812, and after the general pacification of Europe, that a suitable opportunity occurred of presenting the subject again to the serious consideration of Congress. From that time the petitioners have been constantly before us, and the period has at length arrived proper for a final decision of their case. support the American treaty; and he could not support the treaty because he had learned, or heard, while in America, that the claims were no longer the property of the original sufferers, but had passed into unworthy hands. If any such thing has been learned in the United States, it has been learned from sources entirely incorrect. The general fact is not so; and this prejudice, thus operating on a great national interest-an interest in regard to which we are in danger of being seriously embroiled with a foreign statewas created, doubtless, by the same incorrect and unfounded assertions which have been made relative to this other class of claims. "In regard to both classes, and to all classes of claims of American citizens on foreign governments, the statement is at variance with the facts. Those who make it have no proof of it. On the contrary, incontrovertible evidence exists of the truth of the very reverse of this statement. The claims against France, since 1800, re now in the course of adjudication. They are 1, or very nearly all, presented to the proper ibunal. Proofs accompany them, and the rules of the tribunal require that, in each case, the true ownership should be fully and exactly set out, on oath; and be proved by the papers, vouchers, and other evidence. Now, sir, if any man is acquainted, or will make himself acquainted, with the proceedings of this tribunal, so far as to see who are the parties claiming the indemnity, he will see the absolute and enormous error of those who represent these claims to be owned, in great part, by speculators. The truth is, sir, that these claims, as well those since 1800 as before, are owned and possessed by the original sufferers, with such changes only as happen in regard to all other property. The original owner of ship and cargo; his representative, where such owner is dead; underwriters who have paid losses on account of captures and confiscations; and creditors of insolvents and bankrupts who were interested in the claims-these are the descriptions of persons who, in all these cases, own vastly the larger portion of the claims. This is true of as to the degree of responsibility to the American sufferers from French spoliations, which the convention of 1800 extinguished, on the part of France, or devolved on the United States, the Senate itself being most competent to decide that question. Under this impression, he hopes that he will have sufficiently conformed to the purposes of the Senate, by a brief statement, prepared in a hurried moment, of what he un derstands to be the question. "The second article of the convention of 1800 was in the following words: "The minis ters plenipotentiary of the two parties, not being able to agree, at present, respecting the treaty of alliance of the 6th of February, 1778, the treaty of amity and commerce of the same date, and the convention of the 14th of Novem ber, 1788, nor upon the indemnities mutually due or claimed, the parties will negotiate further on these subjects, at a convenient time; and, until they may have agreed upon these points, the said treaties and convention shall have no operation, and the relations of the two countries shall be regulated as follows." "When that convention was laid before the Senate, it gave its consent and advice that it should be ratified, provided that the second article be expunged, and that the following article be added or inserted: "It is agreed that the the claims on Spain, as is most manifest from the proceedings of the commissioners under the Spanish treaty. It is true of the claims on France arising since 1800, as is equally manifest by the proceedings of the commissioners now sitting; and it is equally true of the claims which are the subject of this discussion, and provided for in this bill. In some instances claims have been assigned from one to another, in the settlement of family affairs. They have been transferred, in other instances, to secure or to pay debts; they have been transferred, sometimes, in the settlement of insurance accounts; and it is probable there are a few cases in which the necessities of the holders have compelled them to sell them. But nothing can be further from the truth than that they have been the general subjects of purchase and sale, and that they are now holden mainly by purchasers from the original owners. They have been compared to the unfunded debt. But that consisted in scrip, of fixed amount, and which passed from hand to hand by delivery. These claims cannot so pass from hand to hand. In each case, not only the value but the amount is uncertain. Whether there be any claim, is in each case a matter for investigation and proof; and so is the amount, when the justice of the claim itself is established. These circumstances are of themselves quite sufficient to pre-present convention shall be in force for the term vent the easy and frequent transfer of the claims from hand to hand. They would lead us to expect that to happen which actually has happened; and that is, that the claims remain with their original owners, and their legal heirs and representatives, with such exceptions as I have already mentioned. As to the portion of the claims now owned by underwriters, it can hardly be necessary to say that they stand on the same equity and justice as if possessed and presented by the owners of ships and goods. There i no more universal maxim of law and justic, throughout the civilized and commercial word, than that an underwriter, who has paid a loss on ships or merchandise to the owner, is entitled to whatever may be received from the property. His right accrues by the very act of payment; and if the property, or its proceeds, be afterwards recovered, in whole or in part, whether the recovery be from the sea, from captors, or from the justice of foreign states, such recovery is for the benefit of the underwriter. Any attempt, therefore, to prejudice these claims, on the ground that many of them belong to insurance companies, or other underwriters, is at war with the first principles of justice. "A short, but accurate, general view of the history and character of these claims is presented in the report of the Secretary of State, on the 20th of May, 1826, in compliance with a resolution of the Senate. Allow me, sir, to read the paragraphs: "The Secretary can hardly suppose it to have been the intention of the resolution to require the expression of an argumentative opinion of eight years from the time of the exchange of the ratifications;" and it was accordingly so ratified by the President of the United States, on the 18th day of February, 1801. On the 31st of July of the same year, it was ratified by Bonaparte, First Consul of the French Republic, who incorporated in the instrument of his ratification the following clause as part of it: "The government of the United States, having added to its ratification that the convention should be in force for the space of eight years, and having omitted the second article, the gov ernment of the French Republic consents to accept, ratify, and confirm the above convention, with the addition, importing that the conven tion shall be in force for the space of eight years, and with the retrenchment of the second arti cle: Provided, That, by this retrenchment, the two states renounce the respective pretensions which are the object of the said article." "The French ratification being thus condi tional, was, nevertheless, exchanged against that of the United States, at Paris, on the same 31st of July. The President of the United States considering it necessary again to submit the convention, in this state, to the Senate, on the 19th day of December, 1801, it was resolved by the Senate that they considered the said conven tion as fully ratified, and returned it to the President for the usual promulgation. It was ac cordingly promulgated, and thereafter regarded as a valid and binding compact. The two contracting parties thus agreed, by the retrenchment of the second article, mutually to renounce the respective pretensions which were the ob |