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 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.