Pinckney resisted this reasoning as energetically as possible; but when Cevallos offered to sign a convention covering the Spanish depredations, and reserving the Franco-Spanish claims for future discussion, Pinckney properly decided to accept an offer which secured for his fellow-citizens five or ten millions of money, and which left the other claim still open.[154] The convention of Aug. 11, 1802, was sent to the Senate Jan. 11, 1803, in the excitement that followed Morales’s withdrawal of the _entrepôt_ at New Orleans. The Senate deferred action until the last moment of the session; and then, March 3, 1803, after Nicholson and Randolph had appeared at the bar to impeach Judge Pickering, Pinckney’s claims convention was taken up, and the nine Federalists were allowed to defeat it by the absence of Republican senators. The majority reconsidered the vote and postponed the whole subject till the next session. Thus, owing to the action of Federalist senators, when Jefferson in the following summer, after buying Louisiana, looked about for the means of buying Florida, he found these classes of claims, aggregating as he supposed between five and ten million dollars, ready to his hand. Monroe was promptly ordered to insist upon treating both classes alike, and setting both of them against the proposed purchase of Florida. “On the subject of these claims you will hold a strong language,” said Madison.[155] A third class of claims could be made useful for the same purpose. Damages had been sustained by individuals in the violation of their right of deposit at New Orleans in the autumn of 1802. “A distinction, however, is to be made,” wrote Madison, “between the positive and specific damages sustained by individuals and the general injuries accruing from that breach of treaty. The latter could be provided for by a gross and vague estimate only, and need not be pressed as an indispensable condition. The claim however may be represented as strictly just, and a forbearance to insist on it as an item in the valuable considerations for which the cession [of Florida] is made. Greater stress may be laid on the positive and specific damages capable of being formally verified by individuals; but there is a point beyond which it may be prudent not to insist, even here, especially as the incalculable advantage accruing from the acquisition of New Orleans will diffuse a joy throughout the western country that will drown the sense of these little sacrifices. Should no bargain be made on the subject of the Floridas, our claims of every sort are to be kept in force.” The President had not then decided to claim West Florida as included in the Louisiana purchase, and he conceived of no reason which should make Spain cling the more closely to Florida on account of the loss of New Orleans.