and, after all, that they were incurred by credible expense both in military and naval English enterprises, covered by the American armaments. flag. It is pretended he acknowledged them! Would he have inserted two lines in the treaty to rescind them, to get rid of such claims, when he would not pay those he had acknow-ing the dates and the numbers.] ledged?

To recur once more, sir, to the valuable consideration which it is pretended we received for these claims. It is maintained that we were paid by receiving a release from onerous obligations imposed upon us by the treaty of guaranty, which obligations I have already shown that the great Washington himself pronounced to be nothing; and therefore, sir, it plainly follows that this valuable consideration was nothing!

What, sir! Is it said we were released from obligations? From what obligations, I would ask, were we relieved? From the obligation of guaranteeing to France her American possessions; from the obligation of conquering St. Domingo for France! From an impossibility, sir! for do we not know that this was impossible to the fleets and armies of France, under Le Clerc, the brother-in-law of Napoleon himself? Did they not perish miserably by the knives of infuriated negroes and the desolating ravages of pestilence? Again, we were released from the obligation of restoring Guadaloupe to the French; which also was not possible, unless we had entered into a war with Great Britain! And thus, sir, the valuable consideration, the release by which these claims are said to be fully paid to the United States, turns out to be a release from nothing! a release from absolute impossibilities; for it was not possible to guarantee to France her colonies; she lost them, and there was nothing to guarantee; it was a onesided guaranty! She surrendered them by treaty, and there is nothing for the guaranty to operate on.

[Here the honorable senator read a long list of military and naval preparations made by Congress for the protection of these claims, specify

Nor did the United States confine herself solely to these strenous exertions and expensive armaments; besides raising fleets and armies, she sent across the Atlantic embassies and agents; she gave letters of marque, by which every injured individual might take his own remedy and repay himself his losses. For these very claims the people were laden at that period with heavy taxes, besides the blood of our people which was spilt for them. Loans were raised at eight per cent. to obtain redress for these claims; and what was the consequence? It overturned the men in power at that period; this it was which produced that result, more than political differences.

The people were taxed and suffered for these same claims in that day; and now they are brought forward again to exhaust the public treasury and to sweep away more millions yet from the people, to impose taxes again upon them, for the very same claims for which the people have already once been taxed; reviving the system of '98, to render loans and debts and encumbrances again to be required; to embarrass the government, entangle the State, to impoverish the people; to dig, in a word, by gradual measures of this description, a pit to plunge the nation headlong into inextricable difficulty and ruin!

The government, in those days, performed its duty to the citizens in the protection of their commerce; and by vindicating, asserting, and satisfying these claims, it left nothing undone which now is to be done; the pretensions of this bill are therefore utterly unfounded! Duties are reciprocal; the duty of government is proThe gentleman from Georgia [Mr. King], has tection, and that of citizens allegiance. This given a vivid and able picture of the exertions bill attempts to throw upon the present govof the United States government in behalf of ernment the duties and expenses of a former these claims. He has shown that they have government, which have been already once acbeen paid, and more than paid, on our part, by quitted. On its part, government has fulfilled, the invaluable blood of our citizens! Such, with energy and zeal, its duty to the citizens; indeed, is the fact. What has not been done it has protected and now is protecting their by the United States on behalf of these claims? rights, and asserting their just claims. Witness For these very claims, for the protection of our navy, kept up in time of peace, for the prothose very claimants, we underwent an in-tection of commerce and for the profit of our

It must be taken into consideration that, at this period, our population was less than it is now, our territory was much more limited, we had not Louisiana and the port of New Orleans, and yet our commerce was far more flourishing than it ever has been since; and at a time, too, when we had no mammoth banking corporation to boast of its indispensable, its vital necessity to commerce! These are the facts of numbers, of arithmetic, which blow away the edifice of the gentlemen's poetry, as the wind scatters straws.

citizens; witness our cruisers on every point of the globe, for the security of citizens pursuing every kind of lawful business. But, there are limits to the protection of the interests of individual citizens; peace must, at one time or other, be obtained, and sacrifices are to be made for a valuable consideration. Now, sir, peace is a valuable consideration, and claims are often necessarily abandoned to obtain it. In 1814, we gave up claims for the sake of peace; we gave up claims for Spanish spoliations, at the treaty of Florida; we gave up claims to Denmark. These claims also were given up, long anterior to others I have mentioned. When peace is made, the claims take their chance; some are given up for a gross sum, and some, such as these, when they are worth nothing, will fetch nothing. How monstrous, therefore, that measure is, which would transfer abandon-babes that have been held up after the ancient ed and disputed claims from the country, by which they were said to be due, to our own country, to our own government, upon our own citizens, requiring us to pay what others owed (nay, what it is doubtful if they did owe); requiring us to pay what we have never received one farthing for, and for which, if we had received millions, we have paid away more than those millions in arduous exertions on their behalf!

With respect to the parties in whose hands these claims are. They are in the hands of insurance offices, assignees, and jobbers; they are in the hands of the knowing ones who have bought them up for two, three, five, ten cents in the dollar! What has become of the screaming

Roman method, to excite pity and move our sympathies? What has become of the widows and original claimants? They have been bought out long ago by the knowing ones. If we countenance this bill, sir, we shall renew the disgraceful scenes of 1793, and witness a repetition of the infamous fraud and gambling, and all the old artifices which the certificate funding act gave rise to. (Mr. B. here read several interesting extracts, describing the scenes which then took place.)

Can

I should not discharge the duty I owe to my country, if I did not probe still deeper into One of the most revolting features of this bill these transactions. What were the losses which is its relation to the insurers. The most inled to these claims? Gentlemen have indulged famous and odious act ever passed by Congress themselves in all the flights and raptures of was the certificate funding act of 1793, an act poetry on this pathetic topic; we have heard passed in favor of a crowd of speculators; but of "ships swept from the ocean, families plunged the principle of this bill is more odious than in want and ruin ;" and such like! What is the even it; I mean that of paying insurers for their fact, sir? It is as the gentleman from New losses. The United States, sir, insure! Hampshire has said: never, sir, was there known, any thing be conceived more revolting and atrobefore or since, such a flourishing state of com- cious than to direct the funds of the treasury, merce as the very time and period of these the property of the people, to such iniquitous spoliations. At that time, men made fortunes if uses? On what principle is this grounded? they saved one ship only, out of every four or five, Their occupation is a safe one; they make calfrom the French cruisers! Let us examine the culations against all probabilities; they make stubborn facts of sober arithmetic, in this case, fortunes at all times; and especially at this very and not sit still and see the people's money time when we are called upon to refund their charmed out of the treasury by the persuasive losses, they made immense fortunes. It would notes of poetry. [Mr. B here referred to pub- be far more just and equitable if Congress were lic documents showing that, in the years 1793, to insure the farmers and planters, and pay them '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, up to 1800, the ex- their losses on the failure of the cotton crop; ports, annually increased at a rapid rate, till, in they, sir, are more entitled to put forth such 1800, they amounted to more than $91,000,000]. | claims than speculators and gamblers, whose

trade and business it is to make money by losses. This bill, if passed, would be the most odious and unprincipled ever passed by Congress.

Another question, sir, occurs to me: what sum of money will this bill abstract from the treasury? It says five millions, it is true; but it does not say "and no more;" it does not say that they will be in full. If the project of passing this bill should succeed, not only will claims be made, but next will come interest upon them! Reflect, sir, one moment: interest from 1798 and 1800 to this day! Nor is there any limitation of the amount of claims; no, sir, it would not be possible for the imagination of man, to invent more cunning words than the wording of this bill. It is made to cover all sorts of claims; there is no kind of specification adequate to exclude them; the most illegal claims will be admitted by its loose phraseology!

Again suffer me to call your attention to another feature of this atrocious measure; let me warn my country of the abyss which it is attemped to open before it, by this and other similar measures of draining and exhausting the public treasury!

Again, look at the species of evidence which will be invited to appear before these commissioners; of what description will it be? Here is not a thing recent and fresh upon which evidence, may be gained. Here are transactions of thirty or forty years ago. The evidence is gone, witnesses dead, memories failing, no testimony to be procured, and no lack of claimants, notwithstanding. Then, sir, the next best evidence, that suspicious and worthless sort of evidence, will have to be restored to; and this will be ready at hand to suit every convenience in any quantity. There could not be a more effective and deeper plan than this devised to empty the treasury! Here will be sixty millions exhibited as a lure for false evidence, and false claims; an awful, a tremendous temptation for men to send their souls to hell for the sake of money. On the behalf of the moral interests of my country, while it may yet not be too late, I denounce this bill, and warn Congress not to lend itself to a measure by which it will debauch the public morals, and open a wide gulf of wrong-doing and not-to-be-imagined evil!

The bill proposes the amount of only five millions, while, by the looseness of its wording, it will admit old claims of all sorts and different natures; claims long since abandoned for gross sums; all will come in by this bill! One hun

These claims rejected and spurned by France; these claims for which we have never received one cent, all the payment ever made for them urged upon us by their advocates being a meta-dred millions of dollars will not pay all that physical and imaginary payment; these claims which, under such deceptive circumstances as these, we, sir, are called upon to pay, and to pay to insurers, usurers, gamblers, and speculators; these monstrous claims which are foisted upon the American people, let me ask, how are they to be adjudged by this bill? Is it credible, sir? They are to be tried by an ex parte tribunal! Commissioners are to be appointed, and then, once seated in this berth, they are to give away and dispose of the public money according to the cases proved! No doubt, sir, they will be all honorable men. I do not dispute that! No doubt it will be utterly impossible to prove corruption, or bribery, or interested motives, or partialities against them; nay, sir, no doubt it will be dangerous to suspect such honorable men; we shall be replied to at once by the indignant question, "are they not all honorable men?" But to all intents and purposes this tribunal will be an ex parte, a one-sided tribunal, and passive to the action of the claimants.

will be patched up under the cover of this bill! In bills of this description we may see a covert attempt to renew the public debt, to make loans and taxes necessary, and the engine of loans necessary with them! There are those who would gladly overwhelm the country in debt; that corporations might be maintained which thrive by debt, and make their profits out of the misery and encumbrances of the people. Shall the people be denied the least repose from taxation? Shall all the labor and exertions of gov ernment to extinguish the public debt be in vain? Shall its great exertions to establish economy in the State, and do away with a system of loans and extravagance, be thwarted and resisted by bills of this insidious aim and character? Shall the people be prevented from feeling in reality that we have no debt: shall they only know it by dinners and public rejoicings? Shall such a happy and beneficial result of wise and wholesome measures be rendered all in vain by envious efforts to destroy the whole,

and render it impossible for the country to go on without borrowing and being in debt?"

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 25 to 20; but failed in the House of Representatives.

It still continues to importune the two Houses; and though baffled for fifty years, is as pertinacious as ever. Surely there ought to be some limit to these presentations of the same claim. It is a game in which the government has no chance. No number of rejections decides any thing in favor of the government; a single decision in their favor decides all against them. Renewed applications become incessant, and endless; and eventually must succeed. Claims become stronger upon age-gain double strength upon time—often directly, by newly discovered evidence—always indirectly, by the loss of adversary evidence, and by the death of contemporaries. Two remedies are in the hands of Congress―one, to break up claim agencies, by allowing no claim to be paid to an agent; the other, to break up speculating assignments, by allowing no more to be received by an assignee than he has actually paid for the claim. As signees and agents are now the great prosecutors of claims against the government. They constitute a profession-a new one-resident at Washington city. Their calling has become a new industrial pursuit—and a most industrious ɔne-skilful and persevering, acting on system and in phalanx ; and entirely an overmatch for the succession of new members who come ignorantly to the consideration of the cases which they have so well dressed up. It would be to the honor of Congress, and the protection of the treasury, to institute a searching examination into the practices of these agents, to see whether any undue means are used to procure the legislation they desire.

CHAPTER CXXI.

ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JACK

SON.

On Friday, the 30th of January, the President with some members of his Cabinet, attended the funeral ceremonies of Warren R. Davis, Esq., in the hall of the House of Representatives-of

which body Mr. Davis had been a member from the State of South Carolina. The procession had moved out with the body, and its front had reached the foot of the broad steps of the eastern portico, when the President, with Mr. Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Mahlon Dickerson. Secretary of the Navy, were issuing from the door of the great rotunda-which opens upon the portico. At that instant a person stepped from the crowd into the little open space in front of the President, levelled a pistol at him, at the distance of about eight feet, and attempted to fire. It was a percussion lock, and the cap exploded, without firing the powder in the barrel. The explosion of the cap was so loud that many persons thought the pistol had fired I heard it at the foot of the steps, far from the place, and a great crowd between. Instantly the person dropped the pistol which had missed fire, took another which he held ready cocked in the left hand, concealed by a cloak-levelled it—and pulled the trigger. It was also a percussion lock, and the cap exploded without firing the powder in the barrel. The President instantly rushed upon him with his uplifted cane: the man shrunk back; Mr. Woodbury aimed a blow at him; Lieutenant Gedney of the Navy knocked him down; he was secured officers of justice for judicial examination. The by the bystanders, who delivered him to the examination took place before the chief justice of the district, Mr. Cranch; by whom he was committed in default of bail. His name was ascertained to be Richard Lawrence, an Englishman by birth, and house-painter by trade, at irascible. The pistols were examined, and found present out of employment, melancholy and to be well loaded; and fired afterwards without fail, carrying their bullets true, and driving them through inch boards at thirty feet distance; nor could any reason be found for the two failures at the door of the rotunda. On his examination the prisoner seemed to be at his ease, as if unconscious of having done any thing wrong-refusing to cross-examine the witnesses who testified against him, or to give any explanation of his conduct. The idea of an unsound mind strongly impressing itself upon the public opinion, the marshal of the district invited two of the most respectable physicians of the city (Dr. Caussin and Dr. Thomas Sewell), to visit him and examine into his mental con

dition. They did so: and the following is the that he had been frequently in the habit of report which they made upon the case:

loading and firing those pistols at marks, and that he had never known them to fail going off on any other occasion, and that, at the distance of ten yards, the ball always passed through an inch plank. He also stated that he had loaded those pistols three or four days previous, with ordinary care, for the purpose attempted; but that he used a pencil instead of a ramrod, and that during that period, they were at all times carried in his pocket; and when asked why they failed to explode, he replied he knew no cause. When asked why he went to the capitol on that day, he replied that he expected that the President would be there. He also stated, that he was in the rotunda when the President arrived; and on being asked why he did not then attempt to shoot him, he replied that he did not wish to interfere with the funeral ceremony, and therefore waited till it was over. He also observed that he did not enter the hall, but looked through a window from a lobby, and saw the President seated with members of Congress, and he then returned to the rotunda, and waited till the President again entered it, and then passed through and took his position in the east portico, about two yards from the door, drew his pistols from his inside coat pocket, cocked them and held one in each hand, concealed by his coat, lest he should alarm the spectators-and states, that as soon as the one in the right hand missed fire, he immediately dropped or exchanged it, and attempted to fire the second, before he was seized; he further stated that he aimed each pistol at the Presi dent's heart, and intended, if the first pistol hal gone off, and the president had fallen, to have defended himself with the second, if defence had been necessary. On being asked if he did not expect to have been killed on the spot, if he had killed the President, he replied he did not; and that he had no doubt but that he would have been protected by the spectators. He was fre"Upon being interrogated as to the circum- quently questioned whether he had any friends stances connected with the attempted assassina- present, from whom he expected protection. To tion, he said that he had been deliberating on this he replied, that he never had mentioned his it for some time past, and that he had called at intention to any one, and that no one in particu the President's house about a week previous lar knew his design; but that he presumed it to the attempt, and being conducted to the was generally known that he intended to put President's apartment by the porter, found him the President out of the way. He further stated, in conversation with a member of Congress, that when the President arrived at the door, whom he believed to have been Mr. Sutherland, near which he stood, finding him supported on of Pennsylvania; that he stated to the Presi- the left by Mr. Woodbury, and observing many dent that he wanted money to take him to Eng-persons in his rear, and being himself rather to land, and that he must give him a check on the bank, and the President remarked, that he was too much engaged to attend to him-he must call another time, for Mr. Dibble was in waiting for an interview. When asked about the pistols which he had used, he stated that his father left him a pair, but not being alike, about four years since he exchanged one for another, which exactly matched the best of the pair; these were both flint locks, which he recently had altered to percussion locks, by a Mr. Boteler;

"The undersigned, having been requested by the marshal of the District of Columbia to visit Richard Lawrence, now confined in the jail of the county of Washington, for an attempt to assassinate the President of the United States, with a view to ascertain, as far as practicable, the present condition of his bodily health and state of mind, and believing that a detail of the examination will be more satisfactory than an abstract opinion on the subject, we therefore give the following statement. On entering his room, we engaged in a free conversation with him, in which he participated, apparently, in the most artless and unreserved manner. The first interrogatory propounded was, as to his agewhich question alone he sportively declined answering. We then inquired into the condition | of his health, for several years past-to which he replied that it had been uniformly good, and that he had never labored under any mental derangement; nor did he admit the existence of any of those symptoms of physical derangement which usually attend mental alienation. He said he was born in England, and came to this country when twelve or thirteen years of age, and that his father died in this District, about six or eight years since; that his father was a Protestant and his mother a Methodist, and that he was not a professor of any religion, but sometimes read the Bible, and occasionally attended church. He stated that he was a painter by trade, and had followed that occupation to the present time; but, of late, could not find steady employment-which had caused much pecuniary embarrassment with him; that he had been generally temperate in his habits, using ardent spirits moderately when at work; but, for the last three or four weeks, had not taken any; that he had never gambled, and, in other respects, had led a regular, sober life.

the right of the President, in order to avoid wounding Mr. Woodbury, and those in the rear, he stepped a little to his own right, so that should the ball pass through the body of the President, it would be received by the doorframe, or stone wall. On being asked if he felt no trepidation during the attempt: He replied, not the slightest, until he found that the second pistol had missed fire. Then observing that the President was advancing upon him, with an uplifted cane, he feared that it contained a sword,