promote repose by giving security and stability to human affairs. An important public policy lies at their foundation. They stimulate to activity and punish negligence. While time is constantly destroying the evidence of rights, they supply its place by a presumption which renders proof unnecessary. Mere delay, extending to the limit prescribed, is itself a conclusive bar. The bane and antidote go together.'

"In the English common law, long before statutes of limitation took formal shape, this principle of peace was applied in the rulings that indebtedness, which has existed for so long a period as to enable its payment or its extinguishment to be logically inferred, is to be presumed to have been paid. What this period is varies, so it has always been held at common law, with extraneous conditions. In newly-settled communities, or in communities in which men come and go on comparatively brief business errands, the period in which a debt is presumed to be still alive is much shorter than it would be in a community of persons of continuous residence, of settled business habits, and with facilities which enable the vouchers of the past to be carefully guarded, and witnesses of past transactions to be, within the ordinary limits of life, appealed to. When the question is one of diplomatic negotiation, then the circumstances of the nations interested, as well as of individual claimants, is to be taken into consideration; the fact of intermediate war, for instance, when it does not extinguish a claim, operates to excuse delay in pressing it. But, in all cases, when the rule to be applied is not one of statute, but of common or public law, then the question of the presumption of the effect on indebtedness of lapse of time is one to be settled by taking into consideration not merely the general principle of peace above stated, but all the conditions which would divert the application of that principle to the particular case."

Note of Dr. Francis Wharton, Wharton's Int. Law Digest, § 239 (Appendix), III. 972.

"Great lapse of time is known to produce certain inevitable results, among which are the destruction or the obscuration of evidence, by which the equality of the parties is disturbed or destroyed, and, as a consequence, renders the accomplishment of exact or even approximate justice impossible. Time itself is an unwritten statute of repose. Courts of equity constantly act upon this principle, which belongs to no code or system of municipal judicature, but is as wide and universal in its operation as the range of human controversy. A stale claim does not become any the less so because it happens to be an international one, and this tribunal in dealing with it can not escape the obligation of an universally recognized principle,

simply because there happens to be no code of positive rules by which its action is to be governed."

Findlay, commissioner, delivering the opinion of the commission in the case of Ann Eulogia Garcia Cadiz r. Venezuela, No. 47, United States and Venezuelan Commission, convention of Dec. 5, 1885, Moore, Int. Arbitrations, IV. 4199, 4203.

See, also, to the same effect, the able and exhaustive opinion of Little, commissioner, speaking for the same commission, in the case of John H. Williams v. Venezuela, No. 36, Moore, Int. Arbitrations, IV. 4181.

3. EFFECT OF WAR.

§ 1053.

"It was, among other causes, for the aggressions upon our commerce under the orders in council, that the United States made war upon Great Britain; and, having negotiated a peace without stipulation for indemnity in that particular, her case is widely distinguishable from that of France. If we were now to prefer a claim against France for the many millions of which the citizens of the United States were despoiled by her previous to the year 1800, and for which no provision was made by the treaty of that year, there might be some analogy in the cases, and, consequently, more force in the argument."

Mr. Van Buren, Sec. of State, to Mr. Rives, minister to France, July 20,
1829, H. Ex. Doc. 147, 22 Cong. 2 sess. 18, 22.

See, as to the limitéd war with France of 1798, Mr. Gallatin to Mr.
Monroe, Oct. 14, 1816, 2 Gallatin's Writings, 14.

"Mr. Gallatin having been applied to in 1827, to advocate a claim for indemnity of an American citizen on the British Government arising out of the capture and condemnation of vessels and cargoes in 1809, and consequently prior to the war of 1812, wrote to the Secretary of State: You will perceive by the inclosed copy of the Treasury answer that this is one of the numerous cases of vessels condemned by the British courts either under illegal decrees or under false pretenses, and for which no indemnity was obtained by the treaty of peace. You may remember that at Ghent we made a kind. of protocol for the purpose of preserving the rights of the United States and of their citizens, notwithstanding that omission. The claim may at any time be made, though certainly not with any expectation that it will be entertained by Great Britain. I am not aware that this has ever been done. However desirous to be useful to our citizens, I would not venture on a step of this kind before the subject had been fully examined and the President had decided thereon.' (Mr. Gallatin to Mr. Clay, April 3, 1827, MS.)"

Lawrence's Wheaton (1863), 878.

With reference to a claim against Great Britain for a tract of land in the Province of Quebec, the claim being based on certain transactions which took place between the years 1784 and 1806, the Department of State, after holding that diplomatic intervention was not admissible on the merits, declined to reconsider the subject, not only because of the decision previously made, but also because any diplomatic intervention was "rendered inadmissible" by the treaty of Ghent. "While it is true," said the Department, "that that treaty contains no stipulation expressly barring claims that arose prior to its signature, it is equally true, as a principle of law, that a failure to insert in it a stipulation preserving such claims had the effect of rendering them inadmissible as subjects of further diplomatic action. Such has been the position uniformly maintained not only by this Department, but also by the treaty-making power itself. By the convention between the United States and Great Britain, concluded on February 8, 1853, for the general settlement of the claims of the citizens or subjects of the one country against the Government of the other, the jurisdiction of the commission organized thereunder was expressly limited to claims arising out of transactions of a date subsequent to December 24, 1814. This provision merely recognized the principle, which has been repeatedly applied by this Government, that claims growing out of transactions that occurred during or prior to the war of 1812 were barred by the failure to revive and perpetuate them by the treaty of peace.'

Mr. Day, Sec. of State, to Mr. Grout, July 4, 1898, 230 MS. Dom. Let. 169.

"It is well known that the only indemnity which it is in the power of Mexico to make in satisfaction of the just and long-deferred claims of our citizens against her, is a cession to the United States of a portion of her territory. . A state of war abrogates treaties previously existing between the belligerents, and a treaty of peace puts an end to all claims for indemnity for tortious acts committed under the authority of one government against the citizens or subjects of another, unless they are provided for in its stipulations. A treaty of peace which would terminate the existing war, without providing for indemnity, would enable Mexico to relieve herself from her just liabilities."

President Polk, annual message, Dec. 7, 1847, S. Ex. Doc. 1, 30 Cong. 1 sess. 7.

The statements contained in this passage are not, if considered as a general enunciation of doctrine, to be received in an absolute sense, although they were correct as statements of the law touching the claims against Mexico. When the war between the United States and Mexico began, a convention between the two countries, concluded in 1839, for the adjustment of claims, remained in part unexecuted; and the claims of citizens of the United States for "grievous

wrongs perpetrated by Mexico" were recited by President Polk in his special message of May 11, 1846, as one of the causes that justified and required the adoption by Congress of measures for carrying on war. (S. Doc. 337, 29 Cong. 1 sess. 5.)

It is generally laid down by publicists that claims which form the ground or cause of war perish with it unless they are provided for in the treaty of peace. The treaty of Ghent has been held to have put an end to previous claims against Great Britain for spoliations on American commerce under the orders in council; but these claims formed one of the causes of the war of 1812, and the British plenipotentiaries at Ghent refused to entertain them.

"The mere fact of war can never extinguish any claim. If, indeed, claims for indemnity be the professed ground of war, and peace be afterwards concluded without obtaining any acknowledgment of the right, such a peace may be construed to be a relinquishment of the right, on the ground that the question has been put to the arbitrament of the sword, and decided."

Mr. Webster, speech on the French Spoliation Claims, Jan. 12, 1835,
Webster's Works, IV. 162.

By Silas Wright and others, who opposed the payment of the French
spoliation claims, it was maintained that there was a state of war
between the United States and France in 1798 which had put an end
to the claims, but without regard to the view that was taken as to
whether there existed in 1798 an actual state of war, it was on all
sides admitted that the hostilities related to the claims which were
under discussion.

"Private rights, the prosecution of which is interrupted by war, are revived by peace, although nothing may be said upon the subject; for a peace is a return to a normal state of things, and private rights depend not so much on concessions, like public ones, as on common views of justice. And here we include not only claims of private persons, in the two countries, upon one another, but also claims of individuals on the government of the foreign country, and claims— private and not political-of each government upon the other existing before the war. The effect of a treaty on all grounds of complaint for which the war was undertaken is to abandon them."

Woolsey, Int. Law (1901), §§ 160, 161.

The preponderant view of the authorities above cited is that the question, whether claims arising prior to a war are put an end to by the conclusion of a treaty of peace which is silent in regard to them, depends upon the relation of the claims to the war and its causes.

Hall, referring to the effects of a treaty of peace, says that "it puts an end to all pretensions, and draws a veil over all quarrels, out of which the war has arisen. It has set up a new order of things, which forms a fresh starting-point, and behind which neither state H. Doc. 551-vol 6-64

may look. War consequently can not be renewed upon the same grounds."

Halleck says that "a treaty of peace does not extinguish claims unconnected with the causes of war.'

Bluntschli declares that "all the former differences are blotted out by the conclusion of peace, and all the former offences are forgotten. A new war can be provoked only by new causes."

Hall, Int. Law, 4th ed., 583; Halleck, Int. Law, ed. 1861, 853, citing Grotius, Wheaton, Kent, and Wildman; Bluntschli, Le Droit Int. Codifié, Paris ed. 1870, by Lardy, art. 714.

The declaration of Bluntschli above quoted has been cited as authority for the proposition that a treaty of peace puts an end to all claims antedating the war, even though they had no connection with its cause, but it is doubtful whether it should be so construed.

"The treaty of peace does not extinguish claims founded upon debts contracted or injuries inflicted previously to the war, and unconnected with its causes, unless there be an express stipulation to that effect."

Wheaton, Lawrence's edition (1863), 877.

This is an exact reproduction of the language of Vattel, Book IV., chap. 11, § 22.

Wharton, in his International Law Digest, II. 673, § 240, says: “The effect of a war, followed by a treaty of peace, is to extinguish such claims by the citizens of one of the belligerents against the government of the other, as are not provided for by the treaty of peace." He gives no authority for this statement, except a reference to § 337 of his work, which relates to a different subject. Immediately after the statement above quoted, he says: War and subsequent peace extinguish prior treaty obligations not relating to sovereignty," a proposition that certainly can not be maintained. Such a rule would place in the category of treaties abrogated by war the class which has above all other been conceded not to be affected by war, namely, treaties securing rights of private property. (See, supra, § 779.)

4. QUESTION OF CLAIMANT'S CHARACTER OR CONDUCT.

$ 1054.

By Article IX. of the treaty between the United States and Spain of February 22, 1819, the contracting parties mutually renounced all claims for damages or injuries suffered prior to the signature of the treaty. By Article XI. the United States undertook to make satisfaction to its own citizens to an amount not exceeding $5,000,000, and a commission was appointed to carry this stipulation into effect. Among the claims submitted to this commission was that of Richard W. Meade for nearly half a million dollars for compensation for supplies furnished to the Spanish Government and for damages for un