Notable and Curious Cases in the Court of Claims. applicants whose petitions have been re jected by the outgoing power. I have said that some of these claimants are cranks. A citizen of the middle West has spent at least three times as much money in postage as he claims the Govern ment owes him, in writing letters to the Treasury, to United States officials, and even to the Chinese and Korean legations. Nearly two million claims have been filed in the Treasury Department alone, and the way in which many of them are addressed is odd enough. It must have taken the "blind reader" of the post-office department to make "second auditor" out of "second oratorio," or out of " sekun oder of the Tresur." Saddest of all are the just claims which will probably never be satisfied, and whose inheritors have died in poverty. Major Joseph Wheaton is recorded as a gallant soldier in the Revolution who served throughout the war. During 1780-1 783 Congress passed an act guaranteeing half pay for life to every officer who stayed in the service to the end of the fight for liberty. Major Wheaton never received a dollar of the money promised. Moreover, during the war of 1812, this gallant officer used thirty thousand dollars of his own money with which to purchase army supplies, at a time when the army must have perished without this aid. He was then acting as assistant quartermaster-general. This money, like wise, was never refunded to him, although Congress doubtless intended that it should be. Some time after the major's death a bill for the relief of his daughter finally suc ceeded in passing both Houses during the same session, but by a fatal error reference was made, not to the Treasury, but to the Interior Department, for payment, and I be lieve the daughter died in poverty, although the undoubted heir to plenty. There are said to be more than fifteen thousand claims, acknowledged to be per fectly just, dating from revolutionary times
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to the last war, which cannot get a satisfac tory settlement from Congress. One of the oldest is that of James Bell, a Canadian, who spent a fortune in building and fitting out three vessels for the Yankees during the Revolution. He was afterward arrested for treason, his unspent property confiscated, and his life spared only through the clemency of the English king, who, it is said, was the man's cousin. Bell was re leased on parole, and at the close of the war returned to this country. Pointing to Wash ington's proclamation, that whoever assisted us in our struggle for freedom should be rewarded if we were successful, he asked for aid. He died without it and very poor. A very small portion of the claim has been paid to some of his descendants, but the bulk of it is still an acknowledged debt. Over in Georgetown there lives, or did a year or two ago, an old lady whose husband was a soldier in the Northern army. During the war the Federal troops used her farm as a camping-ground, and her live stock and other movable property as their own. The damage is put at $20,000, and the justness of her claim is undisputed, but she will prob ably never get her money. Now and again there comes a claim which the government has tried to satisfy, but which the claimant persists in prosecuting to the last cent. One of these, apparently, is the famous Reid claim, which is said to have furnished the plot for Mr. Crane's play, "The Senator" In September, 18 14, British buccaneers destroyed the brig " General Armstrong" in the neutral port of Fayal. The owners tried to recover damages, but their efforts had been fruitless up to 1835, when they all engaged Samuel C. Reid of New York to prosecute their claims. The agreement, signed by the fifteen owners, consigned to Reid their rights in the claim, with the agreement that he was to bear all the ex penses of the prosecution and retain half of • the money he might recover. It was not
