Note 25 — III THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO 1825–1843

The international tribunal was established under the Claims Convention of 1839, and the national tribunal under the treaty of 1848 and a United States Act of 1849. It should be remembered that the amount of our claims was substantial. The total receipts of the U. S. government for the fiscal year ending with June, 1845, were less than $30,000,000. It is true that many of the claims were exaggerated, and some of them a great deal; but this does not matter, for what the United States asked was an investigation of the demands, not the payment of any one at its face. Still, as the inflation of the claims has been urged as an excuse for inattention to them, a word upon that point is desirable. The amounts demanded in such cases are always made as great as possible, and in the instance of Mexico there were special grounds for exaggeration. Our claimants, so far as just in their demands, were entitled to as high interest as other creditors of that government, and the rate it had to pay was very large. In 1832, for instance, this was four per cent a month (Butler, no. 32, 1832), and in 1844 two per cent a month besides six per cent for brokerage (Bankhead, no. 112, 1844). At such rates longstanding claims mounted high, and when the interest was scaled down to five per cent in the process of adjudication (Sen. 320; 27, 2, p. 237), they naturally seemed to have been exorbitant. Indeed, the claims were entitled to even a higher interest than loans, for a good deal of trouble—sometimes an extraordinary deal—was necessary to prove them. “The authorities here can prove anything,” reported even the philo-Mexican Waddy Thompson (no. 4, 1842); and this was only one of numerous obstacles. Probably, too, there was more uncertainty as to eventual payment. Again, if paid at all, the claims were likely to be settled in treasury notes of little value. In fact, all those accepted by the international tribunal already mentioned were actually so payable (Calhoun in Sen. 1; 28, 2, p. 21), and these notes were worth at the time only about thirty cents on the dollar (Thompson, Recolls., 223).