These instructions attest the interest of our Government. Placed first among the _ultimata_ adopted in the councils of President Adams, these indemnities were placed first in the diplomatic instructions. There is yet other evidence of the character and amount of the spoliations. The Secretary of State, in a report to Congress, dated January 18, 1799, after attributing them to French feeling on account of the British treaty, proceeds to characterize them in remarkable words: “Yet that treaty had been made by the French Government its chief pretence for those unjust and cruel depredations on American commerce which have brought distress on multitudes and ruin on many of our citizens, and occasioned _a total loss of property to the United States of probably more than twenty millions of dollars_.”[140] Such were the outrages for which our plenipotentiaries were to seek redress. The Directory had ceased; but on reaching Paris the plenipotentiaries were cordially received by Talleyrand, the citizen minister of Foreign Affairs, who without delay presented them to the First Consul as he was about to mount for that wonderful campaign which, opening with the passage of the Alps, closed at Marengo. Negotiations commenced at once, Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of the First Consul, and afterward King of Spain, being at the head of the commission on the part of France. “Appreciating,” as they announced, “the value of time,” the American plenipotentiaries, in a brief note, on the 7th of April,--the very day when the exchange of powers was completed,--proposed “an arrangement _to ascertain and discharge the equitable claims of the citizens_ of either nation upon the other, whether founded on contract, treaty, or the Law of Nations”; all of which was to be done in order “to satisfy the demands of justice, and render a reconciliation cordial and permanent.”[141] Thus instantly were these claims presented. The French plenipotentiaries in their prompt reply admitted that “_the first object_ of the negotiation ought to be the determination of the regulations, and the steps to be followed, for _the estimation and indemnification of injuries for which either nation may make claim for itself_ or for any of its citizens.”[142] Here was the suggestion of claims, not only “individual,” but also “national,” under which loomed the counter claims of France.