Thirty-two years have elapsed since this achievement took place, and the halls or Congress have, probably, witnessed twenty or thirty frivolous debates on this simple question, whether a great, a powerful, a wealthy nation, lying under heavy obligations to some of its heroic citizens, should honorably discharge the debt, or, through an unworthy species of chicane, delay or evade the payment—debates, which, in addition to the dishonor they inflicted on the nation, probably cost full as much as would have satisfied the claimants, and rescued them from the distress and embarrassments caused by the delay of justice. A delay of justice is often equivalent to a denial of it, and, for aught we know, it may be somewhat the case in the present instance. The justice of the claim has, I apprehend, never been disputed. The difficulty, so far as I understand the subject, is on the apportionment of the sum acknowledged to be due, among the different claimants. But what character would an individual deserve, who owed a sum of money to a number of persons, and delayed, or refused to pay any of them, under pretence that he could not precisely fix their respective quotas? Would he not be set down, and with justice, as a sharper. And are the rules of morality less obligatory on nations than on individuals? If a proper disposition to do justice prevailed with Congress, the difficulty might have been easily obviated, by passing an act awarding the whole sum to the mass of the captors, subject to an apportionment by an arbitration, or by a jury. If the widow of the illustrious Decatur, and her fellow-claimants, whoever they may be, are not common paupers, supported by eleemosynary aid—are not tenants of hospitals, or alms-houses—their escape from this frightful result, attaches no merit to those majorities whose cold-blooded and heartless votes are recorded against the act of paramount justice involved in this question. _Lieutenant Webster and Lieutenant Newcomb_.