CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



eleren of eaid treaty, the tribunal declares that all 

 the claim* referred to in the treaty, aa submitted t<. 

 the tribunal, are hereby fully, perfectly, and finally 



s.. ::.- L 



" Thus, Mr. President, you have in the de- 

 cision <>f the tribunal itself, not classification 

 of the claim* of citizens in an award fur the 

 indemnification of citizens, but an award fol- 

 lowing the treaty which gives to the United 

 States, upon certain principles that it adopts 

 in order to reach a sum that it may give, a 

 certain ram of money at the indemnity that 

 . Britain owes to it for having been ac- 

 cessory to an act of belligerence committed in 

 a state of public war by another belligerent 

 against ns, and not for any act or wrong that 

 it had committed against any citizen of the 

 United States, for it had not done it as such. 

 So it appears to me that we have no difficulty 

 in coming to the result that this money which 

 has been awarded to ns belongs to the people 

 of the United States, and it is for them, through 

 their Representatives in Congress, to determine 

 what disposition ought to be made of it. There 

 is no obligation, so far as I can understand it, 

 of honor, or of law, or of public policy, which 

 can constrain ns in the slightest decree, in 

 respect to this money, to do any other thing 

 than that which we consider, looking to our- 

 selves alone and to our citizens alone, to bo 

 right. 



Then we come to the question as to what 

 is rL'ht. The Committee on the Judiciary, in 

 reporting this bill, presented what they thought 

 under the circumstances would be right. It 

 mast be remembered that the means of de- 

 fending property npon the high-seas, the great 

 highway of nations, is not so perfect as it is 

 upon land ; Tor, as all nations have a right to 

 travel there, you can have no forts and no ex- 

 clusive possession there. Therefore the duty 

 of the Government to the protection of citi- 

 zens' property upon the high-seas may be of a 

 somewhat higher degree than its duty in re- 

 spect to the protection of their property npon 

 land for the reason that I have stated, that 

 within their own territories they can exclude 

 everybody else; they are not obliged to de- 

 cide any questions as to neutrality or the want 

 of it, because no nation under any circum- 

 stances has a right to infract its territory. 

 Standing th'M upon a different principle from 

 that of making compensation to citizens who 

 were loyal in the Southern States for losses on 

 land, we thought we might, as an net of 

 justice and propriety, pay to those who were 

 the real sufferers by these Confederate cruisers, 

 whose forces were augmented by the aid of 

 her Majesty and for which this money was ob- 

 tained, what they had lost. And. Im'viti ? .lone 

 that, we provide that the stiff, rers <lir 

 owners of ships and cargoes, officers, serxmen, 

 everybody whose property or whoso person has 

 suffered a direct loss t>v the i\ru of tlic \ 

 in respect of which the tribunal found her 

 Majesty's Government to have boon accessory, 



shall be paid fur their real losses, their actual 

 losses. It' they have received indemnity by 

 having paid a premium in order that some one 

 should insure them, then of course to that ex- 

 tent they ought not to be paid; they have 

 been mude good. 



"Then we have taken the next step that 

 appeared to us the perfectly logical one from 

 that. If this be not a trust, if it l>e n matter 

 of national right and of national recovery, the 

 next step logically follows that the insurance 

 companies who may have paid to the citizen 

 who had thus received a direct loss the sum 

 <>l his loss, is not entitled to make any claim 

 either upon the generosity or the justi. 

 the Government, if he himself, be he corpora- 

 tion or persun, has not been the loser in that 

 class of business that ho undertook. If the 

 insurer has taxed the people uf the United 

 States by his charges for insurance, which 

 runs right down through freights and cargoes 

 and sales until at last the consumer pays the 

 I'linleii. if ho has made himself good for a 

 given loss by this tax which he has spread 

 over the whole country, in its commerce, in 

 its industry, and in its consumption, there is 

 no ground of equity that we can perceive upon 

 which ho is entitled to say, 'I will take from 

 the Treasury of the United States a double 

 compensation and will thereby realize a profit 

 which out of the ordinary course of my busi- 

 ness I had made good before, and thus gain 

 by the loss of my fellow-citizens.' So we have 

 introduced a provision into this bill, without 

 enlarging npon it now, which excludes all in- 

 surance companies who have made profit out 

 of their war risks; but those who did not 

 make profit out of their war risks we provide 

 to make good their losses, Htandinir in the 

 place of the insured to the extent that their 

 war risks did not make them good. 



"The scope of the bill, then, is based simply 

 upon the theory that this MIIII of money which 

 we have recovered is a sum of monev that be- 

 longs to the nation and does not belong to 

 any citizen ; that it is the money of the peo- 

 ple; that it is not charged with any trust 

 whatever, and. therefore, it is only upon prin- 

 ciples of public policy and natural justice that 

 we provide for these direct sufferers of the 

 class that I have named and npon the prin- 

 ciples that I have thus briefly and imperfectly 

 set forth. If after this there shall he a sum 

 of money still left, it will he a question after- 

 ward for the United States to determine, if it 

 shall be raised, what disposition mijrht prop, r- 

 ly be made toward makinc cood the losse- of 

 other citizens whose vessels were destroyed 

 upon the high-seas by Confederate cruisers in 

 respect of which the tribunal did not appear 

 to think her Majesty's Governracat lin.l '"'.n 

 at fault ; but that is a question perhaps entire- 

 Iv unii'-c.'ssary to be nr:_"i"d IHTC. This. I be- 

 lieve, covers the scope of the principle of the 

 bill." 



Mr. Thnrman, of Ohio, said : " Mr. Prosi- 



