Upon these statements it is insisted by those interested that we as a nation having reaped a benefit in our escape from these French demands against us through the abandonment of the claims of our citizens against France, the Government became equitably bound as between itself and its citizens to pay the claims thus relinquished.
I do not understand it to be asserted that there exists any legal liability against the Government on account of its relation to these claims. At the term of the Supreme Court just finished the Chief Justice, in an opinion concerning them and the action of Congress in appropriating for their payment, said:
We think that payments thus prescribed to be made were purposely brought within the category of payments by way of gratuity—payments of grace and not of right.
From the time the plan was conceived to charge the Government with the payment of these claims they have abided in the atmosphere of controversy. Every proposition presented in their support has been stoutly disputed and every inference suggested in their favor has been promptly challenged.
Thus, inasmuch as it must, I think, be conceded that if a state of war existed between our country and France at the time these depredations were committed our Government was not justified in claiming indemnity for our citizens, it is asserted that we were at the time actually engaged in war with the French nation. This position seems to be sustained by an opinion of the Attorney-General of the United States written in 1798 and by a number of decisions of the Supreme Court delivered soon after that time.
We had certainly abrogated treaties with France, and our cruisers and armed ships were roaming the seas capturing her vessels and property.
So, also, when it is asserted that the validity of these claims was acknowledged in the treaty negotiations by the representatives of France, their declarations to a contrary purport are exhibited.
And when it is alleged that the abandonment of these claims against France was in consideration of great benefits to the Government, it is as confidently alleged that they were in point of fact abandoned because their enforcement was hopeless and that even if any benefit really accrued to us by insistence upon their settlement in the course of diplomatic negotiation such result gave no pretext for taxing the Government with liability to the claimants.
Without noticing other considerations and contentions arising from the alleged origin of these claims, a brief reference to their treatment in the past and the development of their presentation may be useful and pertinent.
It is, I believe, somewhat the fashion in interested quarters to speak of the failure by the Government to pay these claims as such neglect as amounts to repudiation and a denial of justice to citizens who have suffered. Of course the original claimants have for years been beyond the reach of relief; but as their descendants in each generation become more numerous the volume of advocacy, importunity, and accusation correspondingly increases. If injustice has been done in the refusal of these claims, it began early in the present century and may be charged against men then in public life more conversant than we can be with the facts involved and whose honesty and sense of right ought to be secure from suspicion.