Report on the Petition of Timothy Pickering, [27 February 1794]
Report on the Petition of Timothy Pickering1
[Philadelphia, February 27, 1794
Communicated on March 3, 1794]2
[To the Speaker of the House of Representatives]
The Secretary of the Treasury to whom was referred by an order of the House of Representatives of the 3d. of March 1792, the Petition of Timothy Pickering,3 thereupon respectfully reports as follows—
It is understood that the Claims, to which the said petition refers, have been liquidated and covered by written Certificates of the proper Officers.
The[y] have not been heretofore admitted by reason of a certain rule of the Treasury, founded upon the Construction of Acts of Congress, not to allow any Claims of which a Return had not been made to the Treasury by the proper Officer pursuant to those Acts.
It is conceived, that Claims of this nature are among those contemplated in the Act of the last Session, intitled “An Act relative to Claims against the United States, not barred by any Act of limitation, and which have not been already adjusted”4 and that they will find their most proper Course under the provisions of that Act.
All which is humbly submitted
Alexander Hamilton
Secy. of the Treasury
February 27th. 1794.
Copy, RG 233, Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1784–1795, Vol. IV, National Archives.
1. This report was one of twenty-nine reports on petitions enclosed in H to Frederick A. C. Muhlenberg, February 27, 1794.
2. , II, 77–78.
3. On March 3, 1792, the House received a “petition of Timothy Pickering, late Quartermaster General, praying that the officers of the Treasury may be authorized to apply a certain sum of money, heretofore granted to discharge the claims against his Department, to the payment of the demands of certain public creditors in the State of New York, who the petitioner conceives are, from their peculiar circumstances, unjustly precluded by the act of limitation.
“Ordered, That the said … [petition] be referred to the Secretary of the Treasury, with instruction to examine the same, and report his opinion thereupon to the House.” (, I, 526.)
4. 301–02 (February 12, 1793). See “Report on the Petition of Stephen Porter,” February 12, 1794, note 4.