After the Battle of New Orleans the question of the application of this rule was presented repeatedly, and with various results. In one case, a claim for “a quantity of fencing” used as fuel by troops of General Jackson was paid by Congress; so also was a claim for damages to a plantation “upon which public works for the defence of the country were erected.”[35] On the other hand, a claim for “an elegant and well-furnished house” which afforded shelter to the British army and was therefore fired on with hot shot, also a claim for damage to a house and plantation where a battery was erected by our troops, and on both of which claims the Committee, simultaneously with the two former, reported favorably, were disallowed by Congress.[36] In a subsequent case both the report and action seem to have proceeded on a different principle from that previously enunciated. At the landing of the enemy near New Orleans, the levee was cut in order to annoy him. As a consequence, the plantation of the claimant was inundated, and suffered damages estimated at $19,250. But the claim was rejected, on the ground that “the injury was done in the necessary operations of war.”[37] Certainly this ground may be adopted in the present case, while it must not be forgotten that in all the foregoing cases the claimants were citizens within our own jurisdiction, whose property had been used against a foreign enemy. The multiplicity of claims arising in the War of 1812 prompted an Act of Congress in 1816 for “the payment for property lost, captured, or destroyed by the enemy.” In this Act it was, among other things, provided,-- “That any person, who, in the time aforesaid [the late war], has sustained damage by the destruction of his or her house or building by the enemy, while the same was occupied as a military deposit, under the authority of an officer or agent of the United States, shall be allowed and paid the amount of such damage, provided it shall appear that such occupation was the cause of its destruction.”[38] Two years later it was found, that, in order to obtain the benefits of this Act, people, especially on the frontier of the State of New York, had not hesitated at “fraud, forgery, and perhaps perjury.”[39] Thereupon, the law, which by its terms was limited to two years, and which it had been proposed to extend, was permitted to expire; and it is accordingly now marked in our Statutes, “Obsolete.” But it is not without its lesson. It shows what may be expected, should any precedent be adopted by Congress to quicken the claimants now dormant in the South. “It is the duty of a good Government to attend to the morals of the people as an affair of primary concern.”[40] So said the Committee in 1818, recommending the non-extension of the Act. But this warning is as applicable now as then. * * * * *