They took an indemnity.

She delivered to them more houses than her cyclones had destroyed, she furnished them millions of cattle in place of the wild deer and buffalo.

She yielded up her coal regions to warm them in payment for the torture her winters had inflicted.

By this treaty she gave them everything she had and promised to be good.
We are the inheritors of the good things of that peace treaty.

We were born rich; we revel in the "reparations" that our fathers wrung from a conquered Nature.