years; and thus their half pay for life be, on an average, worth the gross sum, in presenti, of at least seven years' full pay. Any gentleman can test the general accuracy of these results, by a reference to Price's Annuity Tables, and to Milne on Annuities. In England, Sweden, and France, it will be seen that a person of thirty years of age is ascertained to be likely to live thirty-four more; and of thirtyfive years of age, to live about twenty-eight more. An annuity for thirty-four years is worth a fraction more than fourteen times its annual amount, if paid in a gross sum in advance; and one for twenty-eight years, only a fraction less than fourteen times its annual amount. So that seven years' full pay is as near a fair commutation for the half pay for life, taking their average ages, as can well be calculated, or as is necessary for the present inquiry.

Again: If we advert to the real facts, as since developed, these petitioners, had the commutation act not passed, or not been at all binding, would now receive twenty-two, instead of five years' full pay, as they have survived, since the close of the war, over forty-four

years.

Congress, as if conscious that the pressure of the times had driven them to propose a substitute for the half pay for life, not in any view sufficient or equivalent, as regarded the younger officers, who alone now survive and ask for redress, provided, in the commutation act, not that each officer might accept or reject it at pleasure, but that it should take effect if accepted within certain periods, not exceeding six months, by majorities in the several lines of the army. The most influential officers, in any line, are of course the elder and superior ones. To these, as a general rule, five years' full pay was a fair equivalent; and, by their exertions, the commutation was accepted by majorities in most of the lines, and no provision ever afterwards made for such officers as were either absent or present, and dissenting.

No evidence can now be found, however, of any acceptance, even by majorities, in any of the lines, till after the expiration of the six months prescribed. But a report of the Secretary of War, dated October 31, 1783 (8 Journals of Congress, 478), enumerates certain lines and individuals that had then signified their acceptance. It would be difficult, as might be expected, to find among the individuals named one who still survives. Those then the youngest, and now surviving, must have felt deeply the inequality proposed; and if most of them had not been absent on furlough, by a resolve of Congress, after peace was expected, probably even majorities in the lines would never have been obtained. The certificates were made out for all, without application, and left with the agents; no other provision was made for those entitled to half pay, and it remained with the younger officers to receive those certificates or nothing.

But it is most manifest that Congress had no legal right to take away from a single officer his vested half pay for life, without giving him a full equivalent; or, to say the least, what the officer should

freely and distinctly assent to, as a full equivalent. It would be contrary to the elementary principles of legislation and jurisprudence : and a majority of the lines could no more bind the minority, on this subject of private rights of property, than they could bind Congress, or the States, on questions of politics. This point need not be argued to men who, like those around me, have watched the discussions and decisions in this country, the last quarter of a century. But no such individual assent was asked here: it was, indeed, declared to be useless for any minority of individuals to dissent; the commutation not having been, in any view, a full equivalent, individual assent cannot fairly be presumed. The subsequent taking of the certificates was merely taking all that was provided, and all they could get, without any pretence that they took it as a full and fair equivalent. And hence it follows, that, on the lowest computation, two years' more full pay are necessary to make anything like a substantial fulfilment of the compact on the part of Congress. In truth, twenty years more would be less than the petitioners could rightfully claim now, if the commutation act had never passed, or if the position was clearly established, that the commutation act, as to them, was under the circumstances entirely void. To say that such a transaction, resorted to under the pressure of the times, and finding no apology except in the severity and necessities of that pressure, should not be relieved against when the pressure is over, and our means have become ample, is to make a mockery of justice, and to profane every principle of good faith.

But consider a little further the history of these proceedings, on the supposition that the five years' full pay was an ample equivalent to all. Was it either paid or secured to them in such manner as to become anything like a substantial fulfilment of the promise? Though the act allowed Congress to give the officers money or securities, and though these last might be in the form prescribed for other creditors, yet the act contemplated giving them money or money's worth, else it doubly violated the former engagement to give them half pay for life. The very nature of half pay, or of any commutation for it, implies that it should be actually paid, or so secured as to raise the money whenever it becomes due. They were here intended as means for immediate maintenance or business to those who, by peace, would be thrown out of their accustomed employment and support. This is too plain for further illustration; and, in conformity with these views, Congress forthwith effected a loan in Europe, and paid in money all the foreign officers entitled to the commutation. But how were the petitioners treated? They did not obtain a dollar in money, and even their certificates were not delivered till six or nine months after their right to half pay accrued; and when received, so far from being secured by pledges or requisitions rendering them valuable as money, the officers could not obtain for them in the market over one-fifth of their nominal amount. The receipts given for these certificates truly

omitted to state that they were in full payment of either the commutation or the half pay. By such means these petitioners, to supply the then existing wants of themselves and families, which was the legitimate object of both the half pay and its commutation, in fact realized only one, instead of five years' full pay, or only two years' half pay, instead of half pay for life.

If this was a substantial fulfilment of the promise to them, I think it would be difficult to define what would have been a defective, delusive and unsubstantial fulfilment. But it has been suggested that the petitioners might all have retained their certificates till afterwards funded, and in that event have escaped loss. Can gentlemen, however, forget that the very design of half pay was to furnish food and raiment, and not a fund to be deposited in bank for posterity? and that, though the use of a portion of it, if all had been paid at once, might have been postponed to a future period, yet their necessities utterly forbade most of them from not resorting forthwith to a single year's pay, which was the entire value of the whole certificate? It is another part of the distressing history of this case, that if, on the contrary, every officer had retained his certificate till funded, his loss on it would have been very near one-third of its amount. But on this point I shall not dwell, as its particulars are more recent and familiar. It will suffice to call to your minds, that the provision made for the payment of these certificates in A. D. 1790 was not by money, nor virtually to their full amount, but by opening a loan, payable in those certificates, and a scrip of stock given for them on these terms: one third of the principal was to draw no interest whatever for ten years; and all the interest then due was to draw thereafter only three per cent. Without going into any calculations of the value of different kinds of stock, under different circumstances, it is obvious that such a payment or security was not worth so much, by nearly a third, as the money would have been worth, or as scrip would have been worth for the whole then due on six per cent. interest.

It is true that this loan was, in form, voluntary; but it is equally true, that, as no other provision was made for payment, no alternative remained but to accept the terms. Hence, if the officer sold his certificate from necessity, he obtained only one-fifth of the amount therein promised; or, if he retained it, he obtained only about two-thirds of that amount.

What renders this circumstance still more striking, we ourselves have in this way saved, and reduced our national debt below what it would have been, many millions of dollars, from eighteen to fifteen, I believe,

and yet, now, in our prosperity, hesitate to restore what was taken in part from these very men, and when not from them, taken from others on account of their speculations on these very men, and their associates in arms. It was, at the time of the funding, thought just, and attempted by some of our ablest statesmen, to provide some retribution to the original holders of certificates for the losses that had been sus

tained on them to provide in some way a partial restoration. But the inherent difficulty of the subject, and the low state of our resources, prevented us from completing any such arrangement, though we were not prevented from saving to the government, out of those very certificates, and similar ones, ten times the amount now proposed for these petitioners.

On this state of facts, then, I hold these conclusions: That what is honest, and moral, and honorable, between debtor and creditor in private life, is so in public life. That a creditor of the public should be treated with at least equal, if not greater kindness, than the creditor of an individual. That when the embarrassments of a debtor give rise to a mode of payment altogether inadequate to what is justly due, and this kind of payment is forced upon the creditor by the necessities of either party, the debtor ought, when relieved from his embarrassments or necessities, to make ample restitution. That it is the dictate of every moral and honorable feeling to supply the deficiency; and especially should the debtor do this where the inadequacy was more than four-fifths of the whole debt; where the debtor, by a part of the arrangement, saved millions to contribute to his present prosperity, and where the debt itself was, as in the present case, the price of blood lavished for the creditor, the wages of those sufferings and toils which secured our present liberties, and fill the brightest page of glory in our country's history. The great military leader of the Revolution has given his sanction to this measure, in the strongest terms, when, calling to mind the lion hearts and eagle eyes that had surrounded and sustained him in all his arduous trials, and reflecting that they,-not soldiers by profession, nor adventurers, but citizens, with tender ties of kindred and friendship, and with cheering prospects in civil life, -had abandoned all to follow him, and to sink or swim with the sacred cause in which he had enlisted, he invoked towards them the justice of his country, and expressed the fullest confidence that "a country rescued by their arms will never leave unpaid the debt of gratitude."

It is not to be forgotten that a measure like this would remove a stain from our history. Its moral influence on our population, in future wars, for wars we must expect, again and again, its consonance with those religious, as well as moral principles of perfect justice, which, in a republic, are the anchor and salvation of all that is valuable; its freedom, I trust, from political prejudice and party feeling, all strengthen the other reasons for its speedy adoption.

Nor have the imputations against it, as a local measure, been at all well founded. What is right or just in regard to contracts, is right without regard to the residence of individuals, whether in the east, the west, or the south. But, independent of that consideration, these venerable worthies, though once much more numerous at the north than elsewhere, have since followed the enterprises of their children, and pushed their own broken fortunes to every section of the Union. It is impossible to obtain perfect accuracy as to their numbers and

residence. But, by correspondence and verbal inquiries, it is ascertained that four or five survive in New Hampshire; from thirty to thirty-five in Massachusetts and Maine; five or six in Rhode Island; five in Vermont; sixteen in Connecticut; twenty in New York; twelve in New Jersey; eighteen in Pennsylvania; three in Delaware; twelve in Maryland; thirty-three to thirty-eight in Virginia and Kentucky; ten to twelve in Ohio; twelve or fifteen in the Carolinas, and five or six in Georgia. As, by the annuity tables, something like two hundred and fifty ought now to be alive, the computations have been made on a medium of two hundred and thirty, between the number ascertained and the conjectural number.

The question, then, is of a general, public nature, and presents the single point, whether, in the late language of an eloquent statesman of New York, these veterans shall any longer remain "living monuments of the neglect of their country.'

All the foreign officers whose claims rested on the same resolve were, as I have before stated, promptly paid in specie; and their illustrious leader, Lafayette, by whose side these petitioners faced equal toils and dangers, has been since loaded with both money and applause. Even the tories, who deserted the American cause, and adhered to one so much less holy and pure, have been fully and faithfully rewarded by England; and it now remains with the Senate to decide,-not whether the sum proposed shall be bestowed in mere charity, however charity may bless both him that gives and him that takes,-nor in mere gratitude, however sensible the petitioners may be to the influence of either, but, whether, let these considerations operate as they may, the officers should be remunerated for their losses, on those broad principles of eternal justice which are the cement of society, and which, without a wound to their delicacy and honest pride, will, in that event, prove the solace and staff of their declining years.

I shall detain the Senate no longer, except to offer a few remarks on the computations on which the sum of $1,100,000 is proposed as the proper one for filling the blank. Various estimates, on various hypotheses, are annexed to the report in this case, and others will doubtless occur to different gentlemen. But if any just one amounts to about the sum proposed, no captious objection will, I trust, be offered on account of any trifling difference. It is impossible, in such cases, to attain perfect accuracy; but the estimates are correct enough, probably, for the present purpose.

The committee have proposed a sum in gross rather than a half pay or annuity, because more appropriate to the circumstances of the case, and because more acceptable, for the reasons that originally gave rise to the commutation.

On the ground that these officers were, in 1783, justly entitled to two years' more full pay, as a fair equivalent for half pay during life; and there being 230 of them of the rank supposed in the report, their monthly pay would be about $30 each. This, for two years, would