and on the 21st of December it passed that body, without a vote recorded against it.

The bill reached the House of Representatives on the 24th of December, and was referred first to the Judiciary Committee, but this reference was changed and it was sent to the Committee on Claims. It was soon reported back with some amendments which did not alter the main features of the bill, and was passed by the House on the 23d of February, 1855, by a vote of 150 to 46. Two days after, February 25, the bill was signed by the President and became a law.*

The act required the appointment of three judges by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to hold their offices during good behavior. President PIERCE appointed two of them on the 3d of March, and the other on the 8th of May, 1855. They organized on the 11th of May, 1855, making choice of Judge GILCHRIST as Presiding Judge, and immediately entered upon the discharge of their duties.

The magnitude and difficulties of the business of the court, with its peculiar jurisdiction, are well presented in a report made to Congress by Judge GILCHRIST, for himself and his associates, bearing date June 23, 1856, from which the following extracts are taken:

"As to the business of the court, we are convinced that no one who has not had personal experience on the subject can have any correct idea of its diversity, its intricacy, its perplexity, the exhausting labor necessary for its investigation, or the large sum of money it involves. Until the institution of this court, there had never been anything like a systematic inquiry into the modes of action by the Government through the Executive Departments, or the relation in regard to contracts and the liabilities arising therefrom which the Government bore to the citizens. It was inevitable, and it is astonishing that it should not have been sooner perceived, that among twenty-five millions of people, inhabiting the almost boundless territory comprehended by the Union, innumerable questions of the most difficult and delicate nature must have arisen, delays in the decision of which were alike discreditable to the moral sense of the people and the public faith of the Government, of which the people were the foundation. It has been often asserted, and proved by the experience of the British Parliament, that legislative bodies are unfitted, by the pressure of great public in

* 10 Stat. L., 612.

terests, from careful judicial investigation into private rights. The consequence has been in our country that claims accumulated until their magnitude repressed all willingness to investigate them, and a state of things arose which made it hopeless almost to present a claim against the United States with any prospect of a decision. Such was the condition of affairs when we entered upon the discharge of our duties. Our field of action was entirely new. We had no precedents to guide us. It was necessary at once to adopt some system of rules for the transaction of business. The ordinary rules of practice in courts of law were obviously inapplicable. We were forced to adopt rules in advance of any experience upon the subject, conscious that we should be forced often to modify and sometimes to abrogate them. We found numerous cases involving questions entirely out of the path of ordinary legal investigation, requiring a degree of care and study rarely necessary in courts of justice. Cases of contracts, intricate in their details, imperfectly defined by the evidence, reducible with difficulty to any legal principles, and enormous in amount, met us at the threshold. Cases involving the proper construction of treaties, important questions of public law, and that most difficult and delicate of all questions, the responsibility of the United States to their citizens, were laid before us. The construction of acts of Congress, the legitimate powers of the Executive Departments, the duties and liabilities of Government officers, the constitutional powers of the General Government, the duties of neutral nations, and questions arising out of a state of war, were all, directly or incidentally, to be inquired into. It cannot be presumed that, with a due regard to our own reputation or to our official oaths, we were disposed to pass lightly upon questions of such momentous importance. Our object has been to give each case such a degree of care and patient attention as would enable us to use it as a precedent in subsequent cases of a like character. Our desire has been, not to get rid of the cases, but to decide them; and in order to do that they must be carefully examined."

The original act provided that at the commencement of each session of Congress, and at the commencement of each month during the session, the court should report the cases upon which they had finally acted, stating in each the material facts which they found established by the evidence, with their opinion in the case, and the reasons upon which such opinion

was founded, and the opinion of any judge who should dissent from the majority. It also directed the court to prepare a bill or bills in those cases which received the favorable decision thereof in such form as, if enacted, would carry the same into effect. These provisions might perhaps have accomplished the desired result, and have proved satisfactory, had they not been accompanied with others which delayed and embarrassed the proceedings thereon in Congress, and, to a large extent, actually prevented any final action whatever. It required the court to transmit, with the reports, the briefs of the solicitor for the Government and of the claimant, and the testimony in each

case.

The claims reported upon adversely were, by the terms of the act, to be placed on the calendar; and all reports and bills from the court were to be continued from session to session, and from Congress to Congress, until finally acted upon. But claims reported favorably upon, and the accompanying bills, were not required to be placed upon the calendar. At the very outset, when the first report came in, the question arose as to what was to be done with the favorable reports and bills. It was decided to refer them to the Committee on Claims, and that course was ever after followed while the system of reporting to Congress continued.

The Committee on Claims finding a mass of evidence, with the briefs in each case, referred to them, very naturally felt it to be their duty to go carefully over the whole matter, to read all the evidence, and examine the briefs of the claimant and of the solicitor for the Government. Claimants were uneasy and pressing, and the troubles and perplexities of the members of the committee were numerous. To hear the cases anew, or to examine all the papers in each case and submit the questions which were raised on the facts and the law to the decision of the committee, would require more time and labor of the members than it was possible to devote to such duty. If the work which the court had done was thus to be all gone over again in committee, little was gained by reference to the court at all. In fact it was a positive loss and injury to the claimants, because they were forced to try their cases twice, while neither Congress nor claimants obtained relief. Favorable reports were often not concurred in or not acted upon at all, and were finally lost altogether.

This was not what the friends of the act establishing the

court intended, nor what they hoped and expected to accomplish. In discussing the original bill in the Senate in December, 1854, Senator HUNTER, of Virginia, had said: "I take it for granted that there would scarcely be a case in which Congress would not concur in the decision of a court thus established." It was no doubt supposed, as was said at a later date by a member of the House from Pennsylvania, that the bills reported by the court would be read over by the committee simply to 66 see whether there was anything contained in them which might be considered as trenching on the privileges or rights of the House, and if there were not, that they might be reported back for the House to act on them."

It was not foreseen that the committee would feel reluctant to take the responsibility of reporting back the bills without examination of the evidence upon which they were founded, evidence which the law required should be submitted to Congress, and which had been referred to them by vote of the House. Such was the inevitable consequence of laying the whole record in each case before Congress, and it defeated one great object of the act establishing the court, that of relieving Congress from the consideration of private claims upon the evidence. When this became apparent from actual experience, Congress, ever ready as it has been to sustain and increase the usefulness of the court, made important and radical changes and improvements in the organic act.

On the 3d of March, 1863, an amendatory act was passed,* of which the most material alterations were these:

Two additional judges were added to the court, making the number five. An appeal was allowed to the Supreme Court by either party where the amount should exceed three thousand dollars, and by the defendants in other cases. Every judgment was to be paid "out of any general appropriation made by law for the payment and satisfaction of private claims, on presentation to the Secretary of the Treasury of a copy of said judgment, certified by the clerk of the Court of Claims, and signed by the chief justice, or in his absence by the presiding judge." Interest was to be allowed upon judgments in certain cases in favor of claimants, when on appeal to the Supreme Court the same should be affirmed. The former requirement that the court should send to Congress the records, evidence, judgments, and bills was done away with.

12 Stat. L., 765.

These provisions still stand as the existing law.*

Some other amendments were made by the act relating to jurisdiction which we shall refer to hereafter, and others in relation to details of less consequence.

The last section of the act led to some difficulty. It provided that no money should be paid out of the Treasury for any claim passed upon by the court till after an appropriation therefor should be estimated for by the Secretary of the Treasury. The Supreme Court held that this authority given to the head of an Executive Department, by necessary implication, to revise the decision of the Court of Claims requiring the payment of money, denied to it the judicial power from the exercise of which appeals could be taken to that court, and they refused to take jurisdiction of any appeals from the Court of Claims.t

When that decision was promulgated, Congress, in March, 1866, repealed the section referred to, and the Supreme Court has ever since entertained jurisdiction of such appeals.

From that time the business of the court has gone on smoothly, with no other difficulties than those incident to the trial and investigation of cases of such magnitude, and involving such intricate and peculiar questions as come before this court.

The Supreme Court has held that the Court of Claims exercises all the functions of a court, and is one of those courts which Congress authorizes under the Constitution, having jurisdiction of contracts between the Government and the citizen, from which appeal lies to the Supreme Court; and that its judgments, where no appeal is taken, are absolutely conclusive of the rights of the parties, just as conclusive as are the judgments of the Supreme Court.§

It is held by the Supreme Court that the provisions authorizing the Court of Claims to give judgment in favor of the United States against claimants without a trial by jury do not violate either the letter or spirit of the seventh amendment to the Constitution, which provides that "in suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved." The court further say that: "Suits against the Government in the Court

* Revised Statutes, §§ 1059–1093.

+ Gordon v. United States, 7 C. Cls.

114 Stat. L, 9.

§ Klein's Case, 7 C. Cls. R., 241, and 13 Wall., 128; O'Grady's Case, 10 C. Cls. R., 134, and 22 Wall., 641.