CLAIMS ON FRANCE FOR SPOLIATIONS OF AMERICAN COMMERCE PRIOR TO JULY 31, 1801.

REPORT IN THE SENATE, OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, APRIL 4, 1864.

APRIL 14th, the Senate, after debate, ordered three thousand extra copies of this report, Yeas 23, Nays 19. Mr. Reverdy Johnson, while urging the extra copies, remarked: "The report is quite an elaborate one, drawn up with all the fulness which characterizes papers of this description prepared by the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. He has collected together, very accurately, I have no doubt, all the facts connected with the claims. He has given the history of the proceedings in Congress and the proceedings of the Executive, and has examined very fully all the principles of law applicable to the questions which the claims present."

The same report was subsequently adopted by the Committee on Foreign Relations, and printed by the Senate, March 12, 1867, and also January 17, 1870.

THE Committee on Foreign Relations, to whom were referred

numerous petitions and resolutions of State Legislatures, taken from the files of the Senate, and also the petition of sundry citizens of New York, presented at the present session, asking just compensation for "individual" claims on France, appropriated by the United States to obtain release from important "national" obligations, have had the same under consideration, and beg leave to report.

THE

HE welfare of the Republic requires that there should be an end of "suits," lest, while men are mortal, these should be immortal. Such is a venerable

maxim of the law, illustrated by the case before the Committee. The present claims have outlived all the original sufferers, and at least two generations of those who have so ably enforced them in the Halls of Congress. Against their unwonted vitality death has not been able to prevail.

CHARACTER OF THESE CLAIMS.

Of all claims in our history, these are most associated with great events and great sacrifices. First in time, they are also first in character, for they spring from the very cradle of the Republic and the trials of its infancy. To comprehend them, you must know, first, how independence was won, and, secondly, how, at a later day, peace was assured. Other claims have been personal or litigious; these are historic. Here were "individual " losses, felt at the time most keenly, and constituting an unanswerable claim upon France, which, at a critical moment, were employed by our Government, like a credit or cash in hand, to purchase release from outstanding "national" obligations, so that the whole country became at once trustee of these sufferers, bound, of course, to gratitude for the means thus contributed, but bound also to indemnify them against these losses. And yet these sufferers, thus unique in situation, have been compelled to see all other claims for foreign spoliations satisfied, while they alone have been turned away. At the beginning of our history, our plundered fellowcitizens obtained compensation to the amount of many million dollars on account of British spoliations. Similar indemnities have been obtained since from Spain, Naples, Denmark, Mexico, and the South American states,

while, by the famous Convention of 1831, France contributed five million dollars to the satisfaction of spoliations under the Continental system of Napoleon. Spain stipulated to pay for every ship or cargo taken within Spanish waters, even by the French; so that French spoliations on our commerce within Spanish waters have been paid for, but French spoliations on our commerce elsewhere before 1800 are still unredeemed. Such has been the fortune of claimants the most meritorious of all.

In all other cases there has been simply a claim for foreign spoliations, but without superadded obligation on the part of our Government. Here is a claim for foreign spoliations, the precise counterpart of all other claims, but with superadded obligation, on the part of our Government, in the nature of a debt, constituting an assumpsit, or implied promise to pay; so that these sufferers are not merely claimants on account of French spoliations, but they are also creditors on account of a plain assumption by the National Government of the undoubted liability of France. The appeal of these creditor claimants is enhanced beyond the pecuniary interests involved, when we consider the nature of this assumption, and especially that in this way our country obtained final release from embarrassing stipulations with France contracted in the war for national independence. Regarding it, therefore, as debt, it constitutes part of that sacred debt incurred for national independence, and is the only part now outstanding and unpaid.

PRELIMINARY OBJECTIONS.

BEFORE proceeding to consider the nature of existing obligations on the part of the United States, the Committee ask attention to three objections which they encounter on the threshold: the first, founded on the alleged antiquity of the original claims; the second, on the alleged character of the actual possessors; and the third, on the present condition of the country.

I. CLAIMS ANCIENT, BUT NOT STALE.

IT is said that the claims are ancient and stale, and therefore not to be entertained. It is true that the claims are the most ancient of any now pending, and that they date from the very origin of our existence as a nation. But in this respect they do not differ from a Revolutionary pension or a Revolutionary claim. Down to this day there is a standing committee of the Senate, entitled "Committee on Revolutionary Claims"; but if a claim traced to the Revolution must be rejected for staleness, there can be little use for this committee. If these claims, after uninterrupted sleep throughout the long intervening period, were now for the first time revived, they might be obnoxious to this imputation. But, as from the beginning of the century they have occupied the attention of Congress, and been sustained by speeches, reports, and votes, it is impossible to say that they have been allowed to sleep.

The whole case was stated with admirable succinctness, as long ago as 1807, by Mr. Marion, of South Carolina, in the report of a committee of the House of Representatives.

"From a mature consideration of the subject, and from the best judgment your Committee have been able to form on the case, they are of opinion that this Government, by expunging the second article of our Convention with France of the 30th September, 1800, became bound to indemnify the memorialists for those just claims which they otherwise would rightfully have had on the Government of France, for the spoliations committed on their commerce by the illegal captures made by the cruisers and other armed vessels of that power, in violation of the Law of Nations, and in breach of treaties then existing between the two nations; which claims they were, by the rejection of the said article of the Convention, forever barred from preferring to the Government of France for compensation." 1

Claims thus authoritatively stated at that early day cannot be overcome by any sleep.

It is true that these claims were pressed with less constancy and determination at the beginning of the century than at a later day. But there are two sufficient reasons for the change. First, the evidence on which they are founded was less generally known at the beginning than afterward. It was only in 1826, under the administration of John Quincy Adams, by the communication to Congress of the ample materials accumulated in the Archives of State, that the true strength of the case was fully revealed. Here, in one full volume, was the documentary history of the whole double transaction,2 showing at once the original obligation of France, and the substituted obligation of the United States, reinforced by the associations of our own Revolutionary history. A more sufficient reason

Report on Petition of Merchants of

1 House Journal, February 18, 1807. Charleston, S. C.: Reports, 9th Cong. 2d Sess., Vol. II.

2 Senate Documents, 19th Cong. 1st Sess., Vol. V., Doc. 102.