The Committee of Claims however, sir, notwithstanding they have throughout their report endeavored to rest upon the Attorney General the responsibility of the construction given to the cession, have at the same time erected a pillar of their own to support it, where they saw it must fall. They well perceived that all reasoning upon the subject was idle, unless one principle could be established; this they have boldly advanced to, and, instead of proving, have assumed as the groundwork of their whole superstructure. It is, that the State was bound in the first instance to compensate the soldiery, notwithstanding the ulterior responsibility of the General Government. From this they infer that the State had a right and by the cession did exercise the right of exonerating the latter Government. Now, Mr. Chairman, grant to the Committee their premises and there is an end to the question between us; their consequences must result. But, sir, I must supplicate their pardon if I refuse my assent to their position until my judgment is convinced. And I must be pardoned for saying that the reasoning to which they have resorted for the purpose of proving it, strikes my mind as the reverse of sound; that it proves too much to prove any thing. It is, that the State Government is in the first instance liable, because the troops were called into the field by the State Executive. This reasoning, Mr. Chairman, would go to prove that in every instance in which militia have been called into the service of the General Government, the States from which they were drafted were in the first instance liable for their compensation, because, in every case which has taken place, they were called into the field by State Executives. The truth is, sir, that in every case the orders have issued from the Executive of the General Government to that of the State Government, and that orders have from the latter issued in consequence thereof, for making the requisite drafts; so that the troops engaged in service under the immediate directions of the State, but under the mediate directions of the United States. This was the course pursued in both the insurrections in the State of Pennsylvania; it was the course in the State of South Carolina in relation to Indian invasion, at the same period at which the services were performed in Georgia for which we are now claiming compensation. It was the same course the other day with the troops ordered down the Mississippi to occupy New Orleans and its dependency. In all these cases the troops were compensated by the General Government in the first instance. It never entered the heart of any man that the States from which the drafts were made, were in the first instance liable, and that resort must afterwards be had by the State Government against the United States. I have always been taught that precedents established principles, but it now seems that the Committee of Claims in the profoundness of