It is sometimes said in sarcasm that it is easy to be generous at the expense of another; but in this case, now that the responsibility has been transferred to our own country, it is not a question of generosity, but of debt. The property of these claimants is actually in the hands of our Government, like assets paid over and deposited “for whomsoever it may concern,”—or, to use a more pungent illustration, like certain property to which there can be no valid title against the original owner. Stolen goods may be followed wherever found. But the vessels of these claimants were stolen by France, and at last are found in the hands of our own Government. Will the Government hold them against the real owners? For nearly ten years it denounced the conduct of France. How, then, can it profit by this conduct at the expense of its own citizens? If the receiver is as bad as the original offender, how can the Government expect to escape the indignant condemnation it fastened upon France? Least of all, how can any early persistency to recover this property excuse its detention now?
VI.—THESE CLAIMS NEVER DESPERATE, SO AS TO BE OF NO VALUE.
Kindred to the last objection is the assertion that the claims were intrinsically desperate, so as to be of no value,—an objection as humiliating as false.
It is humiliating, because it assumes that claims solemnly declared just, both by the executive and legislative branches,—the former by successive acts of diplomacy, and the latter by successive Acts of Congress,—were of “no value.” If this were true, then was our Government, when it sued these claims, guilty of national barratry, for which it would deserve to be thrown over the bar of nations. It was a stirrer of false suits. Such an imputation is an impeachment of the national character.
But it is false. The claims were never “desperate,” except so far as they were doomed to meet the counter-claims of France. On the contrary, they were intrinsically just, and their justice was often admitted even by France, who advanced against them her own pretensions under the treaties. And when the set-off and mutual release occurred, their validity was solemnly recognized; nay, more, they were paid to the United States. Such is the inconsistency of objectors, insisting that claims thus recognized and paid were so far “desperate” as to be of “no value,” when they were of sufficient value to form the sole consideration of release from immeasurable national obligations. If you would find a measure of value for the American claims, you must look to the counter-claims of France, not forgetting that all the vehemence with which these were sustained testifies unmistakably to our claims.
If we may judge from our national history, there is no reason to doubt that these claims, if not released by our Government, would have been fully satisfied by France afterwards. It is in the nature of claims on foreign powers to seem desperate. Such was the case, as is well remembered, with the claims on Denmark, on Spain, and on Naples; but all these have been paid. No just claim by the American Government can be desperate. What claims could seem more desperate than those under the arbitrary, wide-spreading edicts of Napoleon Bonaparte in his pride of place? But President Jackson, when Louis Philippe had become King, made an appeal, as he expressed it, “to the justice and magnanimity of regenerated France,”[246] and even these claims, accruing under a Government which had ceased to exist, were satisfied. The claims in question had as much intrinsic equity, and were more intimately associated with the national sentiments. Asserting that they would have been paid, the Committee are sustained not only by the reason of the case, but by the judgment of the disinterested historian of our country, who thus concludes his account of the Convention of 1800, and its final ratification with the proviso of the First Consul:—
“Had the treaty been ratified in its original shape, the sufferers by the spoliations of the French might, perhaps, before now, have obtained that indemnity from the French Government which they have ever since been asking of their own, but which has hitherto been unjustly withheld.”[247]
There is no statute of limitations between nations; so that these claims would have been as valid against France in 1831 as they unquestionably were in 1800. A nation like the United States has only “to bide its time,” and the day of justice will come. Indeed, President Jackson, when dwelling on the negotiations with France in 1831, bore testimony to the vitality of American claims on foreign powers, when he said that the new Convention would be “an encouragement for perseverance in the demands of justice, by this new proof, that, if steadily pursued, they will be listened to, and admonition will be offered to those powers, if any, which may be inclined to evade them, that they will never be abandoned.”[248] These words of Andrew Jackson are a sufficient answer to the present objection.
ALL OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.
Such are the objections to the responsibility of the United States. The Committee believe that they have all been answered, so that the claims stand above impeachment or question, as a debt to be liquidated and paid. It only remains to consider what sum should be appropriated for this purpose.