The proposition is that the Government shall pay bonds alleged to have been destroyed by fire nearly twenty-three years ago.

The Secretary of the Treasury states that an application for the payment of these bonds, made by Mr. Fulford himself, was rejected by the Department because he was unable to describe the bonds in such a way as to permit their identification and because the evidence of their destruction by fire was inconclusive.

The Senate Committee on Claims, however, in their report on the bill under consideration, state that they are entirely satisfied that Mr. Fulford was the owner of four Government bonds, one for $500, one for $100, and two for $50, and that they were burned with his residence, which was destroyed by fire on the 9th day of July, 1872, and that while he could not furnish the numbers or descriptions of said bonds he understood all these bonds were of the class known as consols of 1867, and that he had collected the coupons thereon for the interest due July 1, 1872.

The particular class of bonds mentioned were dated July 1, 1867, and were payable or redeemable not less than five nor more than twenty years from their date.  The short period expired, therefore, on the 1st day of July, 1872.  That was the date when the last coupons on Mr. Fulford’s bonds, which it is alleged were detached and collected, became due, and only nine days before the supposed destruction of the bonds by fire.

A letter from the Secretary of the Treasury dated July 20, 1892, attached to the report of the Senate committee made upon a bill similar to this which was pending at that time, discloses the fact that among the consols of 1867 then outstanding there were 107 of the denomination of $500, 167 of the denomination of $100, and 85 of the denomination of $50.  This statement merely shows that there were numerous bonds precisely similar to those described as belonging to Mr. Fulford which had not in July, 1892, been redeemed, though the extreme limit of their maturity expired on the 1st day of July, 1887.  The letter of the Secretary further discloses, however, that there were two of these outstanding bonds of the denomination of $500 and two of the denomination of $100 upon which coupons of interest had not been paid since July 1, 1872.  Of course this lends plausibility to the suggestion that two of these four bonds, one of each denomination, were those destroyed when Mr. Fulford’s house was burned in July, 1872; but this suggestion loses its force under the additional statement in the letter of the Secretary of the Treasury that in July, 1892, there were no consols of 1867 of the denomination of $50 whose last coupon was paid July 1, 1872.  This shows conclusively that no fifty-dollar bonds of this class were destroyed by fire in Mr. Fulford’s house and casts great uncertainty upon the description of the other bonds, inasmuch as the theory of the claimants seems to be that all the bonds destroyed belonged to the same class.