In some instances the property
restored has been so wasted and injured as to be of little value; in
others, the amercements and charges have been nearly equal to the value
of the fee simple of the estates; and in many, where the indents[128]
being the species of money received by the State, have been restored to
the former proprietors, an inevitable and considerable loss has been
sustained by the depreciation. In all these cases we have made minute
inquiry into the real benefit that has been derived from such
restitution, whether of the property itself, or of the _indents_ in lien
of it; and having endeavoured to ascertain, as nearly as the
circumstances would admit, the value of what was lost and the value of
what was restored, we have considered the difference as the real loss of
the party."]

[Footnote 128: _Indent_--A certificate, or indented certificate, issued
by the Government of the United States at the close of the revolution,
for the principal or interest of the public debt.--Webster.]

[Footnote 129: The principle thus laid down was neither just, nor true,
nor generous. The claimants had not asked for _charity_, but for
_compensation_, and that not as a favour, but upon the principles of
"right and of strict justice." The British Ministry and Parliament alone
originated and were responsible for the policy and measures which had
led to the calamities so ruinous to the Loyalists, who now claimed
compensation. The claimants had had nothing to do with passing the Stamp
Act; with imposing duties on tea and other articles imported into the
colonies; with making naval officers collectors of customs; with
erecting courts of admiralty, and depriving the trading colonists of
trial by jury, and of rendering the officers of the admiralty courts,
and the complainants before them, the recipients of the first
confiscations imposed by such events; with the acts to close the Port of
Boston, and supersede the chartered constitution of Massachusetts, all
of which, separately and collectively, with other like measures, roused
and united the colonists to resistance, from Maine to Georgia, and in
consequence of which a majority of the General Congress of the colonists
seized the opportunity to renounce their allegiance to the British
Throne, and to declare their separation from the mother country. And
even after the character of the contest became thus changed from one for
British constitutional rights to one for Republican inde