It will be observed how carefully the claims for spoliation were excluded from the benefit of this provision, which is limited positively to “debts.” Though apparently plain, the French Government found difficulties in its execution. Vexatious delays were interposed, and “debts” were treated little better than “claims,” so that our minister at Paris, Hon. Robert R. Livingston, was constrained to address the French Government, under date of March 25, 1802: “The fifth article of the treaty says, expressly, they shall be paid; but justice and good faith say it, independent of the treaty. Yet they remain unsatisfied; nor is the most distant hope as yet afforded them of when or how they will be paid.”[235] Such was the spirit of other correspondence. At last, by one and the same transaction, Louisiana was purchased, and these “debts” were provided for. The plenipotentiaries of the United States, Mr. Livingston and Mr. Monroe,--the latter for a second time plenipotentiary,--undertook to pay eighty millions of francs for the purchase, of which sixty millions were for France, and the remaining twenty millions for the payment of “debts” secured by the Convention of 1800; and these terms were embodied in a treaty and two associate conventions of the same date. The treaty contained the terms of cession. One of the conventions regulated the terms of purchase, and the other provided that “_the debts_ due by France to citizens of the United States, _contracted before the 30th September, 1800_, shall be paid” according to certain regulations. It will be observed that these words descriptive of the “debts” are not unlike those employed in the fifth article of the Convention of 30th September, 1800. The new Convention regulating the payment of “debts” begins with a preamble, setting forth the desire of the President and of the First Consul, “_in compliance with the second and fifth articles_ of the Convention of the 30th September, 1800, to secure the payment of the sum due by France to the citizens of the United States.” From the association of these two articles some hastily infer a purpose to revive the “claims” abandoned in the famous second article. But such revival, instead of being “in compliance” with that article, or, according to the corresponding French words of the Convention, _en exécution_ of that article, would be in direct contradiction of it. The allusion to the second article is obviously to carry into the Louisiana Convention the original exclusion of the spoliation “claims.” If any doubt could arise on this allusion, taken by itself, it would disappear, when we consider that the fifth article is both _inclusive_ and _exclusive_. It includes “debts contracted,” which are to be paid, and it excludes “indemnities claimed on account of captures or confiscations,” which are not to be paid. Thus the language of the preamble is justified, and the Convention is _in compliance_ with both the second and fifth articles of the original Convention.