proceeds on the ground, that though misunderstandings had arisen, a state of peace had never ceased to exist.

The other chief argument against the claim is, that, though the government renounced it, they renounced it only to the extent in which indemnity could have been obtained from France; and as any indemnity was hopeless, at the time the treaty was made, our government did no injury to our citizens by this renunciation. This argument appears to us abundantly objectionable, both in principle and in fact.

It is objectionable in its principle, which is, that the government has a right to take the property of the citizen, simply because it takes but a small amount. The value of these claims, at that moment, might have been small; but they were still the property of the citizen. The indemnity due was a chose in action, of which the assignable value might be differently estimated by different persons, and rated high by none; still, however, the claimants had a right to it themselves; and if the government, for political objects, chose to divest them of this right, it is bound to make them a recompense.

To this it may be rejoined,-granted, but this recompense must be measured by the value of the thing sacrificed; that value was null; therefore the recompense must be nominal. This course of argument, however, is still more objectionable than the preceding. The value of a claim on the government of a civilised country, a permanent debtor, not exposed to the fluctuations of private fortunes, a debtor which, if unprosperous this generation, may prosper the next, and if now administered by an unjust military power, may soon be administered by rulers professing to be actuated by justice; the value of a claim on such a government is not to be estimated at its zero, because at some particular moment it happens to be worth nothing. The claim in question must be estimated according to the probability that France, in the long run, will pay its just debts. If the government of our country, therefore, sacrifices the claims of its citizens, without any compromise with them as to their indemnity, it assumes, in honor and justice, the whole debt.

This is peculiarly true, when it is considered that the value of the claim depends almost wholly on the government itself. If the government shows a disposition to abandon it, and to

tolerate its nonpayment by the foreign government, the value of the claim will, by this policy, sink to nothing. But will it be honorable, when this is done, for the government, after renouncing this claim, to withhold all indemnity from our citizens, and say, it is true we sacrificed your claims, but they were worth nothing to you, and we owe you no recompense? Might not the claimants justly reply; it is true, at that moment our claim was worth little, but it was you who sunk its value. Had you thought proper to engraft it on the everduring youth of the republic; had you told the French First Consul, that you would never renounce it, the rather as it was incurred under circumstances intimately affecting the American honor; that though you could not now enforce it against his colossal power, you would lay it up in your archives, to be reproduced when the arm of America should grow strong enough, to be lifted up with effect against the injustice of Europe, and still better, till France, the metropolitan region of civilisation, should again be governed by the principles of national justice; had you held this language, our claim would not have been worthless. But to sink the value of our property, and then tell us it is nothing worth; what is it but to act over on a large national scale, that detestable villany of our bankrupt monied corporations, who buy up at a discount their own worthless rags?

But we deny that the argument in question is sound in fact. We deny that the claim was worthless. Had it not been renounced, it would have stood on the same footing as the claims of our citizens against France, for losses sustained under the continental system of Napoleon, and the decrees enforcing it. Are they worthless? Is that claim good for nothing, which our government, by the instrumentality of Mr Gallatin, and other able negotiators, has declared to be founded in justice, and one which it is incumbent on France to pay? Is the property of our citizens, after the government of the country has formally taken the protection of it into its own hands, not worth anything? For ourselves, we should be sorry to say, that even in the hands of individual citizens, a claim on the justice of a government, like that of France, is worth nothing. But when our government has taken it up, and has instructed its ministers to assert its justice, then to say that it is worth nothing, is to say that our govern

ment either cannot, or will not, procure its citizens justice. For ourselves, we believe that it both can and will, and we have no doubt the course it is pursuing will ultimately succeed. The French ministry have professed a willingness to examine the claim, and to settle an account with this country. They have indeed endeavored to clog the subject, by connecting it with absurd pretensions to privileges at New Orleans. But they have not shut their ears totally against it; it must, it will be recovered. But for the renunciation by the Convention of 1801, the claims in question would have formed a part of the general claim against France; for no one will say, that the present government of the country is not bound as much to make compensation for one, as for the other. The claim is against France; and France is as much accountable for the acts of her rulers from 1793 to 1800, as from 1805 to 1814.

Again, the claim was valuable, considered as a part of one large claim, a portion of which was actually, in two years, provided for. Up to 1800, no discrimination had been drawn between the different grounds, on which our citizens laid claim to indemnity. The merchant, whose property had been seized under an illegal decree of the National Convention, of the Directory, or of the special agents for the Windward Isles, was considered to have as good a claim on France, and to the aid of his own government in enforcing it, as the citizen whose vessel had been embargoed at Bordeaux, or who had made a contract with the French government for supplies, for which payment was withheld. The only difference in the cases was one strongly in favor of the former claim. The American citizen, who voluntarily makes a contract with a foreign government, has no claim on his own to go to war to protect him. But the citizen, who, lawfully pursuing his commerce on the high seas, is, in violation of the faith of treaties, and of the law of nations, arrested by the cruisers of a foreign power, acting under decrees as offensive to our national honor, as they are oppressive to private rights, is entitled to the national protection; his claim is strongest, by all the obligation which the government of the country has, to vindicate its honor and the inviolability of its flag. Accordingly, Messrs Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry, after recapitulating the claims of a private nature, pass to those for

spoliations, as of far greater importance. And yet by the Convention of 1800, the claims for spoliations were renounced, and the private claims reserved; and, by the Louisiana Convention, provision was made for the payment of the latter. Now, could not the claimants for spoliations reasonably insist, that while the private claims were so valuable, the public ones, those for whose payment the honor of our government was concerned as much as that of France, should never be abandoned, nor sacrificed without an equivalent? Was it not reasonable, that if France had been brought to pay one part, she would sooner or later pay the other? And do we ascribe a becoming language to our government, when we represent it as saying to the claimants for spoliations, 'We have insisted, that the private debts of the French Government to our citizens shall be paid, but for the losses sustained under decrees affecting our national rights and sovereignty, we can and will do nothing for you.'

Again, let us consider the case of the Spanish claims. Who, in 1800, would have thought of preferring the Spanish claim to the French? Supposing their foundation in justice to be equally good, which no one will controvert, who would not have sooner expected justice from France than Spain; or rather, considering the relations of the two countries with each other, who would have expected any better result than that, whenever France should pay us, Spain would imitate the example? But yet, in the course of events, the Spanish claim has proved good; our government kept a protecting hand upon it, and in the end has succeeded in negotiating a treaty, by which it secured not only an ample indemnity to the claimants, but a great national object, second only in importance to the acquisition of Louisiana. With what reason then can it be urged, that a claim on France was worthless, when one on Spain has been liquidated almost at par?

It will be replied, perhaps, that the claim on Spain was always good, because there were vast Spanish possessions on our southern and south western boundary; all Florida and Louisiana; out of which we might, in the last resort, take our indemnity, if we could get it in no other way; while France had no possession on which we could lay our hand. This, however, is arguing only from the position of things at the moment, without taking into view the astonishing mutabi

lity of human affairs. It needs not be said, that to the eye of the statesman, no important political step would ever be contemplated, on the assumption that France had no territory in our vicinity. The monuments of French power and enterprise which encircle us, as with a belt, from Nova Scotia to New Orleans, would present themselves to his mind, and warn him that what had been might again be; while the shifting spectacle of every part of the world would confirm the truth, that nothing is more familiar in the political system, than a change of sovereignty in colonial possessions. How, in fact, can a suggestion now be plausibly made, that this claim was worthless, because France had no adjacent territories, which we could appropriate to ourselves, when it is considered that the very day after the Convention of 1800 was signed, France actually became possessed of territory on the American continent, more than equal to the whole of the United States, and that she was ready to cede this territory, and did cede it, on favorable conditions to us? No one can believe, that if the claim for spoliations had not been renounced, it would not, as well as the claim for private debts on France, have been compromised at the time of the Louisiana purchase. And it is equally apparent, that this immense, and, to the United States, all important territory, would have been abundantly valuable enough to furnish the means of the compromise.

Farther, that it can with no justice be said the claim was worthless, may be argued from the estimation in which it was held by our government, and by the French Government. Our government instructed its ministers not to renounce it; and these ministers estimated it at fifteen millions. The French offset this claim against all their claims on this country. It is necessary only to cast an eye over the correspondence of the French ministers to this country, to see that they regarded their claims as very important, and yet they offset them against the claim of our citizens for spoliations. We have already said, that our ministers were instructed to propose to France a subsidy of two hundred thousand dollars, in acquittal of one part of the obligations, which the treaty of alliance of 1778 imposed upon us. It is a fact, that may assist us to estimate the value of the claim, that the two governments agreed to offset it against all the French claims