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 welfare of the Republic requires that there should he 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 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.