AVES ISLAND. 203 



Btill the proprietors of the guano already taken away and of the that 

 remaining on the island; if they are to be indemnified for the loss, 

 caused by their expulsion, of the profits which they would have gained 

 from the guano business since December, 1854, up to the settlement of 

 their reclamation ; if they have a right to demand that the remainder 

 of that substance be delivered to them, or that they be satisfactorily 

 compensated for their right to it, the result then evidently would be, 

 that Venezuela had no authority to maintain the assignees of the Wal- 

 lace contract in the enjoyment of the rights that it conferred upon 

 them, nor to conclude a new one with them, nor to administer the 

 island, nor to sell its products, since all these acts are the legitimate 

 and exclusive effects of dominion which Venezuela could have refused, 

 as was recognized in the act of soliciting her to perform them. After 

 having thus clearly agreed on the point of the sovereignty of Venez- 

 uela over the Aves, the United States demand, without right, that she 

 should disavow the legality of her proceedings, and that she should 

 destroy her own title ! Upon such a supposition, what would the 

 republic have gained ? To make herself the officious and gratuitous 

 protector of the Americans ; to defend the place for them from the pre- 

 tensions of other nations ; to keep for them, and, at great expense, their 

 property; to employ in their behalf the citizens, arms, and national 

 ships ; to save them from the contingencies and risks of their posses- 

 sion, and ultimately to return it to them, or what is just the same, to 

 pay them the reclamations made through their legation under three 

 heads, in order that they should, have all the advantages resulting 

 from the dominion of the island, while all the charges of the same 

 devolving upon the republic. These are consequences which ought to 

 have great weight with the justice of the Cabinet of Washington, and 

 make it abstain from protecting the cause which lead to them, espe- 

 cially in view of the consideration that the profits of the labor of the 

 guano business on the Aves have already been obtained by other Ame- 

 ricans whom their government so earnestly protected in obtaining for 

 them the continuance of that same contract to which, as is now indi- 

 cated, it would have been opposed either by that government or its 

 legation, if it had been known when granted, and which could not 

 have appeared to them so objectionable. To what is then reduced the 

 indisputable title of Venezuela on an uninhabited and barren place, 

 without property, in fact without any other value except that derived 

 from the guano, if this substance belongs to those who now claim it ? 

 Thus the consequence of its occupation would not have been limited to 

 the portion of that product which they really took off and shipped, 

 being all to which, in the most favorable case, they could pretend ; 

 but it would extend to all which they had no capacity to occupy or 

 defend, notwithstanding their having ceased to take care of and pre- 

 serve it, without which acts property in things cannot be maintained. 

 But, moreover, the United States maintain that the island was 

 common, so that the use made of it by some parties did not exclude the 

 right of others, and ^is is proved by the fact of the existence among 

 the documents of a declaration relative not to those entitled the first 

 occupants of the island, but to others who, at the end of January, 

 1855, sailed from New York, bound to that island in quest of guano, 



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