It includes “debts contracted,” which are to be paid, and it excludes “indemnities claimed on account of captures or confiscations,” which are not to be paid.

If we examine the Louisiana Convention carefully, we find that “debts” alone are provided for.

The depredations upon our commerce were not merely in violation of ancient treaties, but also of the Law of Nations; so that, even if the treaties were annulled, yet the Law of Nations remained with its obligations and remedies.

In plain terms, it was a final determination on our part not to fulfil the treaties.

Let Liberty be with us, and no power can prevail against us.

Let Slavery be acknowledged, and there is no power which will not mock and insult us.

The circumstances of the time, perhaps, rendered it necessary; but your Committee cannot fail to observe, that, according to all principles of justice and the established usage of nations, this very determination consummated the right of…

On our part there was no longer any pretence to fulfil the treaties; so that this very Act of Congress, which is cited to excuse us, may be cited to condemn us.

Whatever the effect of the annulling Act in the judgment of the American plenipotentiaries, it is clear that they regarded the treaties as a cloud to be removed.

Our commerce was despoiled, to the detriment of American citizens.

Defending the interests of its citizens, the country itself was defended.

To abandon these interests, especially without securing an abandonment of French pretensions, would have been an abandonment of the country, leaving it the dishonored victim of untold exactions without end.

Or has it come to this,--that it is right to be zealous in pressing a foreign Government, but not right to be zealous against ourselves, when substituted for that foreign Government, as in the present case?

So far as the two Governments were concerned, claims and counter-claims were extinguished, and neither could look to the other; but it did not follow that American citizens, whose “individual” claims had been appropriated to extinguish…

On the contrary, the very zeal for these claimants, while they looked to France, is still due in their behalf, now that, by the action of their own Government, they must look to their country.

It is sometimes said in sarcasm that it is easy to be generous at the expense of another; but in this case, now that the responsibility has been transferred to our own country, it is not a question of generosity, but of debt.

The property of these claimants is actually in the hands of our Government, like assets paid over and deposited “for whomsoever it may concern,”--or, to use a more pungent illustration, like certain property to which there can be no valid…

But the vessels of these claimants were stolen by France, and at last are found in the hands of our own Government.

Kindred to the last objection is the assertion that the claims were intrinsically desperate, so as to be of no value,--an objection as humiliating as false.

Such an imputation is an impeachment of the national character.

The claims were never “desperate,” except so far as they were doomed to meet the counter-claims of France.

On the contrary, they were intrinsically just, and their justice was often admitted even by France, who advanced against them her own pretensions under the treaties.

Ideas rule the world, and, unlike batteries and battalions, they cannot be destroyed or cut in pieces.

And when the set-off and mutual release occurred, their validity was solemnly recognized; nay, more, they were paid to the United States.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.