From an attentive consideration of them, and of the circumstances under which they were enacted, the committee are fully impressed with an opinion that it would not be expedient to suspend their operation.
Some remarks extracted from a report heretofore made to Congress, are subjoined by the committee, as pertinent to the subject.
It was essential to the public administration that the extent of just demands upon the Government should be, within a reasonable period, definitely ascertained. It was essential to public safety and to right, in relation to the whole community, that all unsettled claims should be made known within a time when there were yet means of proper investigation, and after which the public responsibility should terminate, and the possibility of charging the Government by collusive and fictitious contracts, should be at an end.
The justice as well as policy of acts of limitation, under such circumstances, cannot be doubted.[27]
The situation of no country ever presented a more clear necessity for, or a more competent justification of, precautions of that nature. And all the reasons for adopting them operate to recommend unusual caution in departing from them, with the additional force of this circumstance, that the subsequent lapse of time has increased the difficulties of a due examination.
The accounts of a considerable number of officers, who had it in their power to bind the public by their contracts, and who were intrusted with large sums of money for fulfilling their engagements, remain unsettled. Some of those persons are dead; others have absconded; the business has been conducted by others with so little order as to put it out of their power to render a proper statement of their transactions. The books and papers of others, who had extensive trusts, have been destroyed, so as to preclude the possibility of settlement. Hence it must appear that the Government would, in a great number of cases, be destitute of the means of repelling unfounded and even satisfied claims, for want of documents and vouchers, which only could have resulted from a due settlement with those officers, and from the possession of their books and papers.
It might be inferred without proof, and it has appeared in the course of business at the Treasury, that it was a practice with certain public officers, on obtaining supplies, to give receipts and certificates for them, and when they made payments, either partially or totally, to take distinct receipts from the parties, without either endorsing the payment upon the original vouchers or requiring a surrender of them.
Hence it would often happen that parties could produce satisfactory vouchers of their having performed services and furnished supplies, for which, though satisfaction may have been made, the evidences of it would not be in the possession of the Government. And hence, from relaxations of the limitation acts, there would be great danger that much more injustice would be done to the United States than justice to individuals.
The principles of self-defence, therefore, require and justify an adherence to those acts generally; and there are not any particular species of claims, which, in view of the committee, ought to be exempted from their operation.
Those which have been most frequently referred to by some members of the House, are such claims as include the arrearages of pay and other emoluments to officers and soldiers of the late army, &c.