100 AVES ISLAND. 



forwarded to him. This circumstance induced the supposition that my 

 letters to the President might have been inadvertently overlooked at 

 the department, or that tliey might not have been referred to the de- 

 partment or placed on its files. Such supposition was justified by the 

 fact that in no one of the communications from the department had 

 any of my letters to the President or the original documents trans- 

 mitted with one of them (requested to be filed at the State Department) 

 T^een in anywise noticed. As I was convinced there could not be any in- 

 tention to omit noticing them, because of their being addressed and sent 

 to the President instead of the department, I could not account for such 

 omission in any wise than as just intimated, except that possibly they 

 were not to be forwarded to Mr. Eames because of the trouble of having 

 them all copied; and my offer to copy and forward them to our min- 

 ister was in the first place to attract your attention in a delicate mode 

 to them if they had been so overlooked, or had not been placed on file ; 

 and in the second place, if they -were omitted on account of the trouble 

 of copying them, as is explicitly expressed in my letter, ''to save the 

 department any trouble" on that score. And so also, my letter, as I . 

 thought, in distinct terras placed the suggestion that I would willingly 

 forward to Mr. Eames ''upon its (the department's) intimation copies 

 of all the correspondence in relation to the case that may be in my 

 possession," entirely upon the ground of saving "trouble to the de- 

 partment," and in compliance with an intimation by it that such aid 

 would be acceptable. I deeply regret to perceive from yovir letter that 

 I was so unfortunate in my selection of the language employed as to 

 cause the department to misapprehend me, and to judge me as seeking 

 officiously to interfere with its duties. Nothing could have been further 

 from my object; and most surely it was not intended by me in that 

 letter to intimate that it was desired or deemed advisable for the claim- 

 ants to seek to withdraw their case from the State Department, or pre- 

 termit in any degree their solicitations for its advocacy and protection. 

 They were aware and I was aware that such abandonment of the ordi- 

 nary, proper, and legitimate channel of correspondence, either with 

 ,the Venezuelan government or with the United States minister at 

 Caraccas, would have amounted to a virtual abandonment of their 

 claim ; and as to the questions of national honor and national rights 

 and interests involved, the maintenance and protection of which is the 

 peculium of your department, they certainly had not the arrogance or 

 presumption to express any willingness to assume charge of them by 

 "corresponding directly with the legation ; " nor was the idea enter- 

 tained that they or their attorney possessed equal ability to enlighten 

 the minister on this subject of their own rights and interests, or as to 

 the minister's duties as the Secretary of State, who is chosen for his 

 learning, ability, and patriotic impartiality. It ^s true they and their 

 attorney did imagine that their diligent and vigilant aid, stimulated 

 as they are to such diligence and vigilance by a deep and abiding sense 

 of wrong and injury, and by their important pecuniary interest in- 

 volved, might be usefully rendered by furnishing copies of papers to 

 the department, and thus saving it trouble and drudgery. More than 

 a year has elapsed since the outrage was perpetrated, and since the 

 interposition of the department was invoked, and it was believed such 



