32 AVES ISLAND. 



Venezuela, and that as honest and consciencious men, constrained by 

 nothing except the dictates of justice, and wholly uninfluenced by awe 

 of Dias'.s potential authority and might, or dread of his military force, 

 ought to yield it up to her representative, and even to "lend their aid" 

 to him in sustaining her rights, and to yield to him also our personal 

 property, carried thither from this city, without authQ:ity/?-om us so 

 to do, such acts cannot prejudice our rights, and much less can their 

 acts affect the rights of the United States. And further, the partici- 

 pation by Venezuela and her officers in such course, by those agents, 

 who are not public officers, in derogation of their duty as agents, 

 manifestly exceeding their authority, is of itself a fraud upon us, and 

 an insult to the United States, meriting cogent and efficacious rebuke. 

 The incompatibility of the suppositious decision adverted to with the 

 tenor and character of the paper produced, the testimony this paper 

 gives as to the circumstances of the case, otherwise notorious, the 

 significant dissimilarity between the signatures to the two papers, not 

 only destroy the defense of Venezuela to our claim, but place her in a 

 position in which she cannot creditably advance any other. She is 

 forced to encounter the dilemma presented on the one hand of relying 

 on this alleged agreement or capitulation, and to admit the ^^ duress" 

 stamped on its face ; or, on the other^ that of abandoning it, confessing 

 that it was procured by disreputable deceit and fraud, to maintain a 

 claim as false as the surreptitious testimony by which exclusively she 

 has sought to oppose it. 



We fully admit that we did not in our letter of the 26th February, 

 bestow more extended notice upon the o?'7ie?^ paper, the "license, permit, 

 or notice," signed by Dias alone, solely because we did not regard it 

 as of sufficient importance to merit much comment. Our immediate 

 object in transmitting it, as our letter shows, was to furnish all the 

 facts as well as exhibit i\\Q false pretenses resorted to by Venezuela for 

 her officers despoiling us of our property and committing outrages 

 upon our rights as citizens of the United States, which are briefly 

 alluded to in the same letter. We did not anticipate that the mere 

 taking by our agent into his keeping of a paper written in a foreign 

 language, not understood by him, and signed and presented by another 

 person, would prejudice us in the manner you intimate, and we did 

 not deem it necessary to suggest that it was probably received, in part, 

 because a refusal to "take" it would probably have excited angry 

 feelings, led to hostilities, have occasioned recourse to harsh measures, 

 and, perhaps^ the belligerent collision of armed men, and the sacrifice 

 of human life. Nor did we refer, in our letter of the 26th February, 

 to the fact that our instructions to our agent emphatically forbade 

 resistance by arms to the authorities of Venezuela, if they should claim 

 and seek to assume possession of the isle ; whilst in the same instruc- 

 tions, we expressly denied that any nation had "any just right to dis- 

 possess us." If we erred in not extending the length and enlarging 

 the scope of that letter, and including those facts, it was because we 

 attached no consequence to the "permit, license, or notice," therewith 

 transmitted, or its contents, except as then intimated, and did not 

 anticipate any possible use that it could be applied to rendering these 

 facts material. It is our misfortune that we did not regard it of the 



