Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

lect? He could never consent to such a deduction from such premises.

[ocr errors]

But, Mr. President, said Mr. W., there is another view of this subject, placed upon this basis, which renders this bill of trifling importance in the comparison. If the failure to 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 Mr. Livingston, from which he had before read In speaking of the amount which should be appropriated, Mr. Livingston says:

"The only remaining inquiry is the amount; and on this point the committee have had some difficulty. Two modes of measuring the compensation suggested themselves:

"1. The actual loss sustained by the petitioners.

"2. The value of the advantages received, as the consideration, by the United States.

"The first is the one demanded by strict justice; and is the only one that satisfies the word used by the constitution, which requires just compensation, which cannot be said to have been made when any thing less than the full value is given. But there were difficulties which appeared insurmountable, to the adoption of this rule at the present day, arising from the multiplicity of the claims, the nature of the depredations which occasioned them, the loss of documents, either by the lapse of time, or the wilful destruction of them by the depredators. The committee, therefore, could not undertake to provide a specific relief for each of the petitioners. But they have recommended the institution of a board, to enter into the investigation, and apportion a sum which the committee have recommended to be appropriated, pro rata, among the several claimants.'

"The committee could not believe that the amount of compensation to the sufferers should be calculated by the advantages secured to the United States, because it was not, according to their ideas, the true measure. If the property 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

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

[ocr errors]

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 reThe claims, as claims dress from that quarter. 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 state— was 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 stateThe claims against France, since 1800, ment. are now in the course of adjudication. They are all, or very nearly all, presented to the proper Proofs accompany them, and the tribunal. 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 understands to be the question.

666

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, "The second article of the convention of to secure or to pay debts; they have been 1800 was in the following words: "The ministransferred, sometimes, in the settlement of in-ters plenipotentiary of the two parties, not besurance accounts; and it is probable there are ing able to agree, at present, respecting the a few cases in which the necessities of the hold- treaty of alliance of the 6th of February, 1778, ers have compelled them to sell them. But the treaty of amity and commerce of the same nothing can be further from the truth than that date, and the convention of the 14th of Novemthey have been the general subjects of purchase ber, 1788, nor upon the indemnities mutually and sale, and that they are now holden mainly due or claimed, the parties will negotiate further by purchasers from the original owners. They on these subjects, at a convenient time; and, have been compared to the unfunded debt. But until they may have agreed upon these points, that .consisted in scrip, of fixed amount, and the said treaties and convention shall have no which passed from hand to hand by delivery. operation, and the relations of the two coun These claims cannot so pass from hand to hand. tries shall be regulated as follows." 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 prevent 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.

[ocr errors]

"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

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 present convention shall be in force for the term 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 convention as fully ratified, and returned it to the President for the usual promulgation. It was accordingly 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

ject of that article. The pretensions of the United States, to which allusion is thus made, arose out of the spoliations under color of French authority, in contravention of law and existing treaties. Those of France sprung from 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 November, 1788. Whatever obligations or indemnities, from these sources, either party had a right to demand, were respectively waived and abandoned; and the consideration which induced one party to renounce his pretensions, was that of renunciation by the other party of his pretensions. What was the value of the obligations and indemnities, so reciprocally renounced, can only be matter of speculation. The amount of the indemnities due to the citizens of the United States was very large; and, on the other hand, the obligation was great (to specify no other French pretensions), under which the United States were placed, in the eleventh article of the treaty of alliance of the 6th of February, 1778, by which they were bound for ever to guarantee from that time the then possessions of the Crown of France in America, as well as those which it might' acquire by the future treaty of peace with Great Britain; all these possessions having been, it is believed, conquered at, or not long after, the exchange of the ratifications of the convention of September, 1800, by the arms of Great Britain, from France.

"The fifth article of the amendments to the constitution provides: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." If the indemnities to which citizens of the United States were entitled for French spoliations prior to the 30th of September, 1800, have been appropriated to absolve the United States from the fulfilment of an obligation which they had contracted, or from the payment of indemnities which they were bound to make to France, the Senate is most competent to determine how far such an appropriation is a public use of private property within the spirit of the constitution, and whether equitable considerations do not require some compensation to be made to the claimants. The Senate is also best able to estimate the probability which existed of an ultimate recovery from France of the amount due for those indemnities, if they had not been renounced; in making which estimate, it will, no doubt, give just weight to the painful consideration that repeated and urgent appeals have been, in vain, made to the justice of France for satisfaction of flagrant wrongs committed upon property of other citizens of the United States, subsequent to the period of the 30th of September, 1800.'

"Before the interference of our government with these claims, they constituted just demands against the government of France. They were not vague expectations of possible future indemnity for injuries received, too uncertain to be regarded as valuable, or be esteemed pro

perty. They were just demands, and, as such, they were property. The courts of law took notice of them as property. They were capable of being devised, of being distributed among heirs and next of kin, and of being transferred and assigned, like other legal and just debts. A claim or demand for a ship unjustly seized and confiscated is property, as clearly as the ship itself. It may not be so valuable, or so certain; but it is as clear a right, and has been uniformly so regarded by the courts of law. The papers show that American citizens had claims against the French government for six hundred and fifteen vessels unlawfully seized and confiscated. If this were so, it is difficult to see how the government of the United States can release these claims for its own benefit, with any more propriety than it could have applied the money to its own use, if the French government had been ready to make compensation, in money, for the property thus illegally seized and confiscated; or how the government could appropriate to itself the just claims which the owners of these six hundred and fifteen vessels held against the wrong-doers, without making compensation, any more than it could appropriate to itself, without making compensation, six hundred and fifteen ships which had not been seized. I do not mean to say that the rate of compensation should be the same in both cases; I do not mean to say that a claim for a ship is of as much value as a ship; but I mean to say that both the one and the other are property, and that government cannot, with justice, deprive a man of either, for its own benefit, without making a fair compensation.

"It will be perceived at once, sir, that these claims do not rest on the ground of any neglect or omission, on the part of the government of the United States, in demanding satisfaction from France. That is not the ground. The government of the United States, in that respect, performed its full duty. It remonstrated against these illegal seizures; it insisted on redress; it sent two special missions to France, charged expressly, among other duties, with the duty of demanding indemnity. But France had her subjects of complaint, also, against the government of the United States, which she pressed with equal earnestness and confidence, and which she would neither postpone nor relinquish, except on the condition that the United States would postpone or relinquish these claims. And to meet this condition, and to restore harmony between the two nations, the United States did agree, first to postpone, and afterwards to relinquish, these claims of its own citizens. In other words, the government of the United States bought off the claims of France against itself, by discharging claims of our own citizens against France.

"This, sir, is the ground on which these citizens think they have a claim for reasonable indemnity against their own government. And now, sir, before proceeding to the disputed

« AnteriorContinuar »