nd extent of my
obligations in the premises.

I feel called upon at the threshold to notice an assertion, often
repeated, that the refusal of the United States to satisfy these claims
in the manner provided by the present bill rests as a stain on the
justice of our country. If it be so, the imputation on the public honor
is aggravated by the consideration that the claims are coeval with the
present century, and it has been a persistent wrong during that whole
period of time. The allegation is that private property has been taken
for public use without just compensation, in violation of express
provision of the Constitution, and that reparation has been withheld
and justice denied until the injured parties have for the most part
descended to the grave. But it is not to be forgotten or overlooked that
those who represented the people in different capacities at the time
when the alleged obligations were incurred, and to whom the charge of
injustice attaches in the first instance, have also passed away and
borne with them the special information which controlled their decision
and, it may be well presumed, constituted the justification of their
acts.

If, however, the charge in question be well founded, although its
admission would inscribe on our history a page which we might desire
most of all to obliterate, and although, if true, it must painfully
disturb our confidence in the justice and the high sense of moral and
political responsibility of those whose memories we have been taught
to cherish with so much reverence and respect, still we have only one
course of action left to us, and that is to make the most prompt and
ample reparation in our power and consign the wrong as far as may be
to forgetfulness.

But no such heavy sentence of condemnation should be lightly passed upon
the sagacious and patriotic men who participated in the transactions out
of which these claims are supposed to have arisen, and who, from their
ample means of knowledge of the general subject in its minute details
and from their official position, are peculiarly responsible for
whatever there is of wrong or injustice in the decisions of the
Government.

Their justification consists in that which constitutes the objection to
the present bill, namely, the absence of any indebtedness on the part
of the United States. The charge of denial of justice in this case, and
consequent stain upon our national character, has not yet been indorsed
by the