Charles Evans Hughes

“ If the petition can be fairly said to present the claim that the United States, not simply by virtue of succession to sovereignty under the treaty of cession, but through its subsequent transactions with the appellant, and by contract to be implied from such transactions, has become indebted to the appellant, we think that the claim, as thus limited, would be within the jurisdiction of the court below under the act of 1887. It is true that the averments of the petition lack definiteness. ”

“ Whether the liability asserted is said to result from an express provision of assumption contained in a treaty, or is sought to be enforced as a necessary consequence of the cession made by a treaty, it is equally within the policy and spirit of the statute; and the letter of the statute should not be otherwise construed. It is its evident purpose that the obligations of the United States, directly resulting from a treaty, should not be determined by the court of claims. ”

“ The petition averred that the claimant, a British corporation, secured from the government of Spain, in the year 1879, a concession for the construction and operation of a submarine telegraph cable between the island of Luzon and Hong Kong, with an exclusive privilege for forty years, under which it maintained a cable from Hong Kong to Bolinao; and that in 1897, the government of Spain granted a further concession for three submarine telegraph cables to provide communication between the islands of Luzon, Panay, Negros, and Zebu, in the Philippine archipelago. ”