AVES ISLAND. 207 



demands from the government of Venezuela full indemnification to 

 their claimants for her act in thus treating them as law-hreakers, tres- 

 passers, and criminals, the unexampled and inexplicable ans^Yer of the 

 honorable Minister of Foreign Kelations, as understood by the under- 

 signed^ appears in substance to be: "Let them first prove that they 

 are not law-breakers, trespassers, and criminals; till they do this, they 

 have no right even to complain for being treated as such. ' ' Solicitous 

 to receive with all proper consideration every observation offered by the 

 honorable Minister of Foreign Kelations in behalf of his government, 

 and therefore avoiding upon this point all unfit warmth of expression, 

 the undersigned contents himself with declaring that such answer to 

 this reclamation is, in his judgment, totally inadmissible ; and that he 

 is by no means prepared to assure the government of Venezuela that 

 the government of the United States, in justice to itself and to its citi- 

 zens, must not regard such answer, if insisted on, as constituting 

 aggravation of the original injury. 



By every principle of justice, and by the law of every civilized nation^ 

 the burden of proof and justification is upon the aggressor, and not 

 upon the victim of his aggression. It is for the assailant to justify his 

 assault. It is for the ejector to justify, in law, his violent act of eject- 

 ment. Not by the undersigned, not even by his government alone, 

 but by the voice of the venerable code of public law, by the collective 

 conscience of civilization as embodied in 'legal institutions everywhere, 

 is it proclaimed to Venezuela that, by reason of the perpetration of this 

 deed of violence by her public force upon peaceable and law-abiding 

 men, she must stand in the attitude of a wrong-doer until she either 

 makes due atonement for the act or presents and proves for it affirma- 

 tively a clear and complete justification. 



But, if all this were otherwise, and if the burden of proof were in 

 this case not upon the aggressor, but upon the sufferers of the aggres- 

 sion, still it is wholly manifest that Venezuela, by her own act, has 

 precluded herself from alleging that these claimants were, as against 

 her, unlawfully upon the island. Venezuela has produced, and the 

 Hon. Mr. Gutierrez in his note seems to rely upon the so-called ''agree- 

 ment" between Commander Dias and these men, as her justification for 

 driving them away. That ''agreement," in the judgment of the United 

 States, is wholly 'invalid and void, if not for other reasons, then, at 

 least, for duly proved force and fraud. Venezuela denies that the force 

 and fraud are duly proved, insists wpon its validity, and terms it a 

 ' ' convention. ' ' But^ if these claimants were not, as against Venezuela, 

 lawfully at work on the island, then they were trespassers and law- 

 breakers, engaged in depredation upon Venezuelan property, and in 

 criminal violation of Venezuelan law and territorial sovereignty. Now, 

 assuredly the enlightened government of Venezuela will never acknowl- 

 edge that, acting through high official functionaries in command of 

 her public force, she makes "conventions" with characters of this 

 description found by her in flagrante delicto. Yet tiiis is just what she 

 must not only acknowledge, but maintain, unless she now admits that 

 these men, when she found and ejected them., were not, as against her, 

 law-breakers, trespassers, and depredators, but were, on the contrary, 

 lawfully engaged in lawful occupation. 



