New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-11-28
Injustice of tho Government.

If a-private individual should delay. and
bubble in regard to the payment OF an hon.
est debt, as the Government sometimes
does, he would be denounced as scoun-
drel, and if a merchant, secuted from
Change. We might refer to numerous in
stances in which the Government has de-
layed the payment of just claims against II
for year after year to the utter ruin OF the
claimant, by such subterfuges as no honorable
business man could adopt. But we will now
notice single one, and that is the French
Spoliation Claims, which have been before
Congress for more than half a century, and
Of the justice of which there is no sort OF
doubt. During this time, as we learn from
the Baltimore american, they have been
favorably reported on by forty-one commit
tees; they have seven times passed the Sen
ate and twice the House, and have been
twice vetoed by Polk and by Pierce, neither
of whom seems to have known what they
were vetoing. Thirteen of the State Legis-
latures have instructed their Representatives
in Washington to favor their payment. Quite
number of the original holders of the
claims were Baltimoreans, and their descend
ants here to this day are among those en-
titled to this money. The history of the
claims is briefly this: During the Revolu-
ton our Government made an offensive and
defensive treaty with France of eternal
friendship.
We agreed to make her wars our wars, Tin
substance y to guarantee to her her West
India possessions, and to give her exclusive
right.to bring her prizes into our ports. This
was the price of our independence. When
the French Revolution came, when France
and England were at war, and all Europe
was banded together, not only to crush France
by arms, but to starve her by a league to
capture and confiscate all supplies of pro-
visions, from whatever quarter, going to
French ports, our Government was in. a
dilemma. 1t could not keep its treaty with
her without going to war with England, and
it could not break it without war with France.
But it most feared England, and there
fore, by a series of manGuvres, it not only
evaded its treaty obligations with France,
but it became in fact the ally of England. 1t
proclaimed neutrality, which it could not do
under the treaty. And it gave to England
the right to bring her prizes into our ports,
disregarding entirely the exclusive right OF
the French to do this. Upon this treatment
the French were Of course engaged, and re-
taliated, unlawfully, by the capture and con-
fiscation of vessels of American merchants
entailing upon the latter great loss, as
much, perhaps, at that time Q7S9) as ten OF
eleven millions of dollars. The English
also during this period had damaged our mer.
chant marine to the amount of over eleven
millions of dollars, which the English, upon
| proper presentation of the claims, paid. But
the French spoliations were not paid.
The French acknowledged as just these
claims. Our Government took them up ex.
actly as they did the claims against the
English, and they were the subject of ne.
gotiation. Our Government was trying to
make new treaty with France, by which il
should escape entirely from the obligations
of the old one. This the French,prop.
leon was the first Consul-resisted, and the
negotiations were again and again broken
Off. AT last treaty was concluded which
released the United States from the old OBJ
legations, but only upon the consideration
that those claims for spolia.ion were re-
nounced.
The United States, therefore, got relic
from the old treaty by giving those claims as
consideration, and by that act assumed
them and was legally bound to pay them to
her own citizens. No lawyer of rank who
has examined the subject has ever expressed
any doubt that the United States were under
obligations to compensate the sufferers by
the French spoliatiOns. This was the opinion
of Chief Justice Marshall, and why the
claims have not been previously paid is g
question that must be left to be settled by an
unlucky train of circumstances that has EN-
barrassed them in Congress.