Tuesday, April 1.
Ex-Bashaw of Tripoli.
The bill for the relief of Hamet Caramalli, ex-Bashaw of Tripoli, being under consideration, on the question, Shall this bill pass? Mr. Bradley having finished his remarks in support of the bill—
Mr. Adams said: Mr. President, when the question was yesterday stated from the Chair, on the final passage of this bill, and I found myself called on to record my assent to or dissent from it, I felt myself bound in duty to call upon the committee by whom it was reported, for the evidence upon which they had rested the claim of Hamet Bashaw to the grant of money which is proposed by the bill to be made to him. Together with the bill the committee had reported what they term “a brief statement of facts;” upon which they declare the bill itself to be founded, and wherein they consider his claim, not on the generosity, but on the justice of the United States, from his service and sufferings in their cause, and from his having been deceived and amused with the prospect of being placed on his throne, as legitimate sovereign of Tripoli, and frequently drawn from eligible situations for the purpose of being made the dupe or instrument of policy, and finally sacrificed to misfortune and wretchedness. The bill accordingly makes the grant, expressly in consideration of his services and sufferings in our cause; and, in voting for the bill as it now stands, I should consider myself as sanctioning, as far as my vote would go, the report of the committee, upon which the bill is founded. This I could not do without further information. I thought, sir, and have thought, from the moment when I first saw the report, that the statement it contained, far from being supported by the voluminous documents which have been, in the course of the session, communicated to the Senate, respecting all our transactions with Tripoli, was in many respects contradictory to the whole tenor of those documents; my recollection of the documents was, indeed, only of their general tenor; for, amidst the pressure of the various other important business which we have had before us, I had not found time for a reperusal of them since I had heard them read at your table. But, of their general complexion, my mind had received a clear and very decided impression, with which I found it impossible to reconcile any part of the committee’s report. I presumed, however, that the committee were possessed of evidence, not yet communicated to the Senate, which warranted them in those assertions, which all the papers with which I had been made acquainted tended rather to disprove than to confirm. The chairman of the committee has this day informed the Senate of the grounds upon which the report was drawn up, and has communicated what he considers as the additional evidence in its support. He has also favored us with the arguments upon which he thinks the views of the subject, taken in the report, are fully substantiated. I regret, sir, that neither his arguments nor his evidence have been satisfactory to my mind; but that, after giving them what I deem their full share of weight, I still remain convinced that the report is founded upon a supposed state of facts altogether erroneous, and a view of the whole subject altogether incorrect.
The merits of Hamet Bashaw’s claim upon the United States must depend upon the nature of the engagements contracted between the United States and him, and upon the transactions under those engagements. With respect to the nature of the engagements, there is a very striking difference between the statement of the committee and the statement of the President of the United States in his Message of the 13th of January last. The statement of the committee is as much at variance with the ideas of Hamet Bashaw himself as with those of the President, and equally in opposition to those of Commodore Barron and Mr. Lear, as they appear in the printed papers.
With regard to the facts material to constitute the peculiar character of the ex-Bashaw’s claim, the statement of the committee is no less in flat contradiction to the statements of the President, to the acknowledgments of Hamet Bashaw, and to the tenor of the most substantial documents.
As to the nature of the engagements, the committee represent Hamet Bashaw as having been inveigled, deceived, amused with promises to place him on his throne, and finally betrayed and sacrificed. They appear to think the United States were bound, at all events, and, by their exclusive exertions, to restore him to his dignity, and that the mere act of withdrawing their aid, without accomplishing that object, was a treacherous violation of their faith plighted to him.
Let us now see what was the real nature of those magnificent offers of the reigning Bashaw to his brother—the armed escort, and the two provinces—upon the abandonment of which, under the influence of our agents, the report raises such a fund of merit and sacrifice on the part of Hamet. The committee take this circumstance from a statement made by Mr. Eaton to the Committee of Claims, in February 7, 1804, printed among the documents of that season. Largely as the chairman of the committee has drawn from that statement in making his report, it is singular that the following passage in it, page 16, has escaped his attention:
“Meantime, I had wrought upon the Bey’s Minister to countenance and aid my project, in consideration of my promise to give him $10,000, on condition of his fidelity, and in case of its success. I thought it good policy to secure the Minister; not so much for the service he would render, as to check the mischief which seemed impending. He confessed it was the intention of the enemy Bashaw, by this illusive overture, to get possession of the rival brother in order to destroy him; and he permitted my dragoman, under an injunction of secrecy, to communicate the design to Hamet Bashaw. This determined him to go to Malta, under a pretext to his people of evading the Swedish and American cruisers.”
And are these the overtures? Is this the eligible situation, of such precious value to the ex-Bashaw, that this nation, or its Government, is to be charged with perfidy and treachery because our agents prevailed upon him to abandon them? Even so! The reigning Bashaw sends an escort of forty men, with offers of two provinces, to his exiled brother, for the sole purpose of getting him into his possession to destroy him. Our agents discover the project; apprise the destined victim of his intended fate; rescue him from inevitable destruction—and now, we are to be told, that by this act, we were not conferring, but receiving an obligation, which bound us in honor and duty to restore him to his throne.