American people. But if it were otherwise, this bill, so far from
relieving the past, would only stamp on the present a more deep and
indelible stigma. It admits the justice of the claims, concedes that
payment has been wrongfully withheld for fifty years, and then proposes
not to pay them, but to compound with the public creditors by providing
that, whether the claims shall be presented or not, whether the sum
appropriated shall pay much or little of what shall be found due, the
law itself shall constitute a perpetual bar to all future demands. This
is not, in my judgment, the way to atone for wrongs if they exist, nor
to meet subsisting obligations.

If new facts, not known or not accessible during the Administration of
Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, or Mr. Monroe, had since been brought to
light, or new sources of information discovered, this would greatly
relieve the subject of embarrassment. But nothing of this nature has
occurred.

That those eminent statesmen had the best means of arriving at a correct
conclusion no one will deny. That they never recognized the alleged
obligation on the part of the Government is shown by the history of
their respective Administrations. Indeed, it stands not as a matter of
controlling authority, but as a fact of history, that these claims have
never since our existence as a nation been deemed by any President
worthy of recommendation to Congress.

Claims to payment can rest only on the plea of indebtedness on the part
of the Government. This requires that it should be shown that the United
States have incurred liability to the claimants, either by such acts as
deprived them of their property or by having actually taken it for
public use without making just compensation for it.

The first branch of the proposition--that on which an equitable claim
to be indemnified by the United States for losses sustained might
rest--requires at least a cursory examination of the history of the
transactions on which the claims depend. The first link which in the
chain of events arrests attention is the treaties of alliance and of
amity and commerce between the United States and France negotiated in
1778. By those treaties peculiar privileges were secured to the armed
vessels of each of the contracting parties in the ports of the other,
the freedom of trade was greatly enlarged, and mutual obligations were
incurred by each to guarantee to the other their territorial possessions
in America.

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