Note 132 — PART II.

The case of such merchants was peculiarly distressing. In the "Historical Review of the Commission," the Commissioners state:

"The claims for debts due from subjects of the United States, as well from the magnitude of their amount as the peculiar hardship and injustice under which the claimants labour respecting them, form a subject which appears strongly to press for the attention and interposition of Government. The Treaty of Peace having provided that 'Creditors on either side should meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value of their debts in sterling money,' losses of this nature have not been considered as within the inquiry directed by the Act, because we cannot consider any right or property as lost to the party where the Government of the country has expressly provided and stipulated for a remedy by a public treaty. We think it, however, incumbent upon us to represent that the claimants uniformly state to us the insuperable difficulties they find themselves under, as individuals, in seeking the recovery of their debts according to the provision of the treaty, whilst themselves are the objects of prosecution in courts of justice here for debts due to the subjects of the United States. Under such circumstances, the situation of this class of sufferers appears to be singularly distressing—disabled on the one hand by the laws or practice of the several States from recovering the debts due them, yet compellable on the other to pay all demands against them; and though the stipulation in the treaty in their favour has proved of no avail to procure them the redress it holds out in one country, yet they find themselves excluded by it from all claims to relief in the other."