Daily National Intelligencer

It is now some days since the Editors received a long communication on the subject of the proposed modification of the Claims' Law of the last session, enclosed in the following letter:

JANUARY 16, 1817.

Messrs. Gales & Seaton,

The enclosed communication is addressed to you, with the request that you will publish the same; which is done with the greatest confidence, from your known wishes to assist the distressed. And, should this be the humble means of assisting one worthy claimant to obtain his just rights, many of which it is feared will utterly lose theirs should the report of the honorable committee lately made to the House of Representatives pass without some modification, you will be sure at least of their sincere gratitude and prayers, &c.

If the article itself did not prove it, we should have no doubt, from the envelope, that this communication comes from one of the sufferers by loss of property in the late war. We regret we cannot oblige him by a publication of his letter, because of the space which Debate and other publications on the same subject have already occupied in this paper, and because it is intended only for the eyes of the members of Congress, and therefore more proper to be thrown into the shape of a Memorial and addressed to them, in which shape also it is more certain to meet their notice. There is another reason why we are obliged to decline the publication of this article at the present moment; because we have been already under the necessity of overlooking several documents on this subject, which we believe justice to the parties, as well as to the merits of the question, required us to publish, were it not necessarily our object to shed some light on every public question, by the publication of documents, debate, &c. rather than to surround any one subject with all the lights that might be brought to bear upon it. The documents referred to as having been overlooked are, 1. The report of the committee of claims (of the House of Representatives) on two or three of the Commissioner's decisions: 2. The Report of the Commissioner of Claims, transmitted by the President to the House of Representatives, in pursuance of a resolution of that house; 3. The Letter of Richard Bland Lee, Esq. to the Speaker of the House, appealing to the magnanimity of that body against premature proceedings implicating his character as an officer; 4 and 5. The able memorials from the sufferers on the Niagara frontier and at Buffalo, remonstrating against the repeal of the 9th section of the law of the last session.

We cannot help saying, on this occasion—a poor consolation, indeed, to our correspondent; we wish it were of more value!—that he has our sincere good wishes. Our impressions remain, as they always have been, decidedly favorable to the most liberal indemnity that the law of reason and the usages of nations will justify, to all sufferers by depredations of the enemy, or by operations of our own Army, during the late war.