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 fellow-citizens 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.