tes and Spain
provides that "all ships and merchandise of what nature soever which
shall be rescued out of the hands of any pirates or robbers on the high
seas shall be brought into some port of either State and shall be
delivered to the custody of the officers of that port in order to be
taken care of and restored entire to the true proprietor as soon as due
and sufficient proof shall be made concerning the property thereof." The
case of the _Amistad_, as was decided by the court, was not a case of
piracy, and therefore not within the terms of the treaty; yet it was a
case in which the authority of the master, officers, and crew of the
vessel had been divested by force, and in that condition the vessel,
having been found on the coast, was brought into a port of the United
States; and it may deserve consideration that the salvors in this case
were the officers and seamen of a public ship.

It is left to Congress to consider, under these circumstances, whether,
although in strictness salvage may have been lawfully due, it might not
yet be wise to make provision to refund it, as a proof of the entire
good faith of the Government and of its disposition to fulfill all its
treaty stipulations to their full extent under a fair and liberal
construction.

JOHN TYLER.

WASHINGTON, _February 28, 1843_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I transmit to the Senate, for its consideration with a view to
ratification, a convention further to provide for the payment of
awards in favor of claimants under the convention between the United
States and the Mexican Republic of the 11th of April, 1839, signed
in the City of Mexico on the 30th day of last month. A copy of the
instructions from the Department of State to the minister of the United
States at Mexico relative to the convention and of the dispatches of
that minister to the Department is also communicated. By adverting to
the signatures appended to the original draft of the convention as
transmitted from the Department of State to General Thompson it will be
seen that the convention as concluded was substantially approved by the
representatives of a large majority in value of the parties immediately
interested.

JOHN TYLER.

WASHINGTON, _February 28, 1843_.

_To the House of Representatives_:

I communicate to the House of Representatives a report from the
Secretary of State, which, with the documents[91] accompanying it,
furnishes the information requested