Hon. Charles Sumner,
Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations,
United States Senate.
(B). Page 454.
CLAIMS SINCE THE AWARD.
It remains to speak of claims which have been brought forward or renewed since the awards were made.
One of these is that of Matthew Rooney, master of the bark Caldera, which had been presented to the Commissioners, but was not considered by them, in the absence of proof of citizenship. In 1864 his representatives produced to Mr. Burlingame evidence on this head, and the latter directed that he should be paid in the same manner and proportion as other persons interested in the same class of claims had been paid by order of Mr. Ward, our Minister at Peking.[139]
Mr. Burlingame says, in his dispatch reporting the action which he had taken in this matter: “There is no other demand that can ever come up for payment out of this Indemnity Fund, which has not been examined and decided.”[140]
Other claims have, however, been brought to notice. Some of these are known as the Caldera claims; another is the Neva or Nott & Co.’s claim.
The Caldera was a Chilian bark. On the 5th October, 1854, she sailed from Hong-Kong for San Francisco. During the ensuing night she encountered a storm, by which she was so injured as to be obliged to seek an anchorage. This she found, on the 7th October, between islands lying off the Chinese coast. Here she was attacked and plundered by successive piratical bands. The captain escaped and made his way to Hong-Kong, when, upon his information, steps were taken to recover the property and punish the pirates. A small portion of the cargo was found, and summary justice was inflicted upon such of the pirates as were captured.
The master of the Caldera was an American. An American firm were shippers by her, and various American insurance offices had taken risks upon the hull of the vessel and the larger portion of her cargo. These all appealed to Mr. McLane, then the chief diplomatic officer of the United States in China, with a view to secure indemnity. Mr. McLane declined to take action, declaring that our treaty offered “no basis whatever on which to make a claim against the Chinese Government,”[141] and referred the subject to Mr. Marcy, then Secretary of State. The latter responded, under date of October 5, 1855, “that the parties injured were entitled to indemnification from the Government of China, if not specially by treaty, at least by general principles of international right and obligation.”[142] The same matter forms the subject of a dispatch from Mr. Cass, Secretary of State, to Mr. Ward, dated May 5, 1859, in which, after declaring that “the decision of the case will rest with the Commissioners and yourself,” and detailing certain allegations made to him by the claimants, who appear to have been very active, he says: “If facts of such a nature be proved, the responsibility of the Chinese Government and its duty to make indemnity would seem to be fixed, according to the treaty, as well as according to the Law of Nations.”[143]