Page:Hempstead's Reports.pdf/368

Rh   will be recollected that France ceded the colony of Louisiana to Spain by a special act, at Fontainebleau, on the 3d November, 1762, the order for delivery given by the king on the 21st of April, 1764 (Appendix to L.L. p. 976), the administration remaining in the hands of the French for some time afterwards (Marbois, 137). It may be suggested, then, that if ever it was designed to revive or perfect the claim in question under the French government, there was ample time for it, when it is considered that the sovereignty of the colony continued in the French government between forty and fifty years after the date of the claim.

We hear nothing of this claim during the long continuance in Louisiana of the sovereignty of Spain, who parted with her title to the colony by the St. Ildefonso treaty of 1800, ceding it to the French republic, from whom we acquired it by the treaty of 1803.

History, then, which tells us of the origin of the grant, informs us also of the failure of the enterprise of the grantee; of the disastrous events connected with it; of the transfer of the property to the company, whose rights in the premises, and also its privileges, it seems, were surrendered eventually to the king, whose title to Louisiana, in virtue of successive treaties, finally passed to the United States.

The United States, by S. H. Hempstead, district attorney, answered, denying the matters and things alleged in the petition, and demanding full proof; and the petition was dismissed by the court on the 8th day of May, 1848, for want of prosecution.

Richard Henry Wilde, for petitioners.

S. H. Hempstead, district attorney, for the United States.