If these claims be just, they ought to be paid in
money, and not in anything less valuable. The bill provides that they
shall be paid in land scrip, whereby they are made in effect to be a
mortgage upon the public lands in the new States; a mortgage, too, held
in great part, if not wholly, by nonresidents of the States in which the
lands lie, who may secure these lands to the amount of several millions
of acres, and then demand for them exorbitant prices from the citizens
of the States who may desire to purchase them for settlement, or they
may keep them out of the market, and thus retard the prosperity and
growth of the States in which they are situated. Why this unusual mode
of satisfying demands on the Treasury has been resorted to does not
appear. It is not consistent with a sound public policy. If it be done
in this case, it may be done in all others. It would form a precedent
for the satisfaction of all other stale and questionable claims in the
same manner, and would undoubtedly be resorted to by all claimants who
after successive trials shall fail to have their claims recognized and
paid in money by Congress.
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