212 AVES ISLAND. 



and tlie subsequent armed occupation of the island are regarded bj 

 tlie Venezuelan government as constituting in Venezuela, during the 

 continuance of such occupation, an eminent domain there de facto. 

 Such an assumption on her part would appear to he indicated by her 

 course in administering the island on her own responsibility, and for 

 her own advantage. But respecting the correctness of this assump- 

 tion, neither the undersigned nor his government has seen occasion to 

 express to Venezuela any opinion, for the plain reason that such emi- 

 nent domain de facto, if it exist at all, can obviously exist only as 

 subject to all the responsibilities attaching to the mode of its acquisi- 

 tion and maintenance, and as subject especially to the previous and 

 paramount right of these claimants to full indemnification for the out- 

 rage perpetrated on them in their expulsion and exclusion. This con- 

 sideration effectually disposes of the several observations in which the 

 honorable minister of foreign relations has set forth the inconvenience 

 which must result to Venezuela, upon the supposition that those claim- 

 ants are entitled to the full indemnification now demanded. Incon- 

 veniences, more or less grave, always flow from the perpetration of 

 wrongful acts. The expulsion of these claimants and their subsequent 

 exclusion by Venezuela from the enjoyment of their rights on the 

 Aves were, in the judgment of the United States, unquestionably 

 wrongful acts. It would be a strange doctrine indeed which would 

 withhold from peaceable and law-abiding men, thus gravely inferred, 

 a just indemnification on the ground of inconveniences thereby result- 

 ing to the perpetrator of the injury. 



The Hon. Mr. Grutierrez has in his note referred to the contract 

 concluded in December, 1854, by the Venezuelan government with 

 Mr. Wallace, to the alleged course of the government of the United 

 States in sustaining the validity of that contract, and to the negotia- 

 tion which, after the annulment of that contract by Venezuela, took 

 place with the aid of the undersigned under his instructions, in order 

 to protect the rights and interests vested by that contract in the sev- 

 eral guano islands regarded as rightfully belonging to Venezuela, and 

 of course other than the Aves which was not so regarded. In this 

 series of occurrences, as referred to in his note, the honorable minister 

 of foreign relations appears to allege or intimate the existence of an 

 obstacle to the admission of this claim for indemnification. But in 

 order to prevent any such obstacle, the honorable minister of foreign 

 relations has manifestly felt himself inevitably compelled to omit or 

 suppress in his note all mention of the most capital and conspicuous 

 facts of record in those occurrences. 



Neither the government of the United States nor the undersigned, at 

 that time in the United States, knew anything of the Wallace con- 

 tract, nor of any purpose in any quarter to conclude any such contract 

 until months after its conclusion. 



This fact is wholly omitted in the note of the Hon. Mr. Grutierrez. 



Both the government of the United States and the undersigned dis- 

 tinctly and afiirmatively refused all manner of sanction to that con- 

 tract, in so far as it related to the island of Aves in question, and this 

 refusal of all such sanction was officially made known to the govern- 

 ment of Venezuela by the undersigned in his immediate notification to 



