American revenue cutter Jefferson, going ashore at Tampico to see our consul, was arrested, and his boat's crew were imprisoned. For this outrage the Mexican government removed the responsible officer, General Gómez, but soon afterwards he was given a better post at Vera Cruz, and showed his unchastened spirit in the Natchez affair (Sen. 1; 25, 2, p. 98. Sen. 160; 24, 2, p. 70: Ellis).
24. British complaints were almost numberless: e.g. Ward, no. 77, 1826; Pakenham, nos. 48 of 1827, 119 of 1828, 37 of 1830; 13Ashburnham, nos. 16 of 1837 and 74 of 1838 (a man persecuted with a 'tissue of iniquities" for years); Bankhead to Bocanegra, July 4, 1844.
The Foreign Office distinctly stated that contract and treaty rights were denied (13Aberdeen to Mex. min., Nov. 1, 1843; to Pakenham, no. 19, Aug. 15, 1836). 77Dec. 31, 1844, it made this statement: "In Mexico British Subjects have been oppressed, harassed, and maltreated without redress except that which has been extorted by unceasing remonstrance. The expostulations of Great Britain. . . have been with very few exceptions contumeliously set at naught; and the same illegal exactions which have been the subject of those expostulations have been repeated, while yet the former grievance was unredressed." The British minister complained, e.g., that the coast officials annoyed his fellow citizens; that frequently to their injury the constitution was violated by state authorities; that some of them were persecuted, imprisoned, or expelled from the country in defiance of law; that money was extorted from them under threats. A loud 52protest of American ship captains, Campeche, May 26, 1835, illustrates well the tricks and outrages to which our commercial interests were subjected. What abuse and tyranny our citizens were liable to suffer in the interior is shown by the memorial of Augustus Storrs and twenty others, Chihuahua, April 17, 1832, transmitted through C. W. Davis, who was described by our secretary of state, Nov. 24, 1832, as a respectable citizen of the U. S. who had long been practising medicine at Chihuahua (Ho. 351; 25, 2, p. 87). (France) Coxe, Review, 69; Barker in Texas Review, Jan., 1917; Rives, U. S. and Mexico, i, 433.
25. 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. 8S. 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