well-looking legal gentleman, in blandest
accents, proceeded to say Jonathan must not lay a foundation for
others he was first to knock down; for if a rule applied to great
principles it must not be made subservient to small exigencies of an
opposite character: Jonathan must bow to his own stumbling-blocks. It
did, however, seem that this Commission had been viewed by certain
parties as a sort of _ola podra_; before which deluded persons thought
nothing more certain than that their manifold grievances would be
patiently heard, their claims find a ready settlement, and their
family affairs all be handsomely arranged. There had been men from the
coast of Africa seeking a protection under cousin Jonathan's wing, by
which their demands on Old John were to them certain of being paid.
There were good men from Manchester, who, forgetting their
anti-slavery sentiment's, sought a relationship with our noble cousin
which dated from previous to 1812, and under the shadow of his wings
now sought to make the rascally Britishers pay for certain slaves
frittered away from them while residing in Georgia, during the last
war. There too, were noble Dukes and Earls presenting claims against
our cousin for certain lands in Florida, presented long since to them
by some imbecile king, who would upon the same style of conditions,
have given away the whole Continent. The said gentlemen had long since
forgotten the titles, and were only reminded of them by the existence
of this Commission. English gentlemen from Mexico sought, through the
virtues of this Commission, pay for property appropriated by General
Scott during the Mexican war. Pensionless widows thought it the grand
centre of generosity, and sought through it compensation for dead
husbands. Holders of Mississippi bonds regarded it a perfect El
Dorado, at the shrine of which those long repudiated mementoes would
be duly paid, hopes and angry passions requited, and old Mississippi
herself again, as bright as a new-coined Jackson cent: and last, but
not least, gentlemen with very credulous and speculative faculties,
and who held the most doubtful species of Florida bonds, had made
their hearts glad on the certain payment of them by the Commission.
'In a word,' said the learned Councillor, 'nothing can be more certain
to my mind (and I am borne out in the belief by the variety and
character of the claims presented to this Commission) than that the
whole world is beginning to look on our wor