AVES ISLAND. 233 



Mr. Eames lias presented a claim against Venezuela, the admission 

 of wliicli, in the view of the republic, is attended with serious difficul- 

 ties. An attempt has been made to set aside one of the most consid- 

 erable of these difficulties by saying, on the faith of the declarations 

 of certain individuals, that a document signed by two individuals was 

 not the spontaneous act of their will, but the result of compulsion and 

 fraud on the part of the officer to whom they delivered it. Since the 

 argument used against such statements in the first note of the under- 

 signed, Mr. Eames has persisted in advancing them as an evidence of 

 the nullity of an act which, even had it been compulsorily consented 

 to, could not be invalidated, unless the means of violence resorted to 

 against the declarants should be made out with precision and by proof. 

 It was natural, therefore, that measures should have been taken to 

 ascertain what took place between Colonel Domingo Dias, the other 

 Venezuelan officers at Aves, and the Americans found in the island. 



If the United States extend confidence to the allegations of their 

 citizens ; Venezuela, which must not discredit the reports of her citi- 

 zens, much less the reports of those who, by the position which they 

 occupy and the functions which they exercise, are worthy of every 

 consideration and respect ; Venezuela, which cannot but defend their 

 rights, has believed that it was its right also to be informed, on its 

 part, of the real state of the occurrences, and to seek the information 

 at the hands of those who ought to possess the necessary knowledge. 

 The government had supposed that it was contemplated to discuss a 

 question between two equal States ; that it had the power to set forth 

 its objections to rebut the proofs of the claimants, and to take all nec- 

 essary time to deliberate ; and for this reason, unwilling to build up 

 its defence without the intervention of the adverse party, it invited 

 Mr. Eames' presence at the taking of two declarations. Yet he has 

 declined thus to intervene, upon the averment that in his judgment 

 and in that of his government the facts are amply elucidated and 

 abundantly proved. Granted that this is the judgment of the one 

 and the ottier, but such it is not of the government of Venezuela and 

 of the minister who pens this answer. Mr. Eames will not pretend 

 that Venezuela is held to subscribe to foreign judgments, for the mere 

 reason that they are such. In that case all that would be necessary 

 were to impose them upon the government without the necessity of 

 discussion, and with no other limitation than that of the will of the 

 claimants. 



But it is further required that the decisions of the executive power 

 in the matter — and this is not the only one comipended to its care — 

 should be made in a short and peremptory period of time, suited to 

 special circumstances, prepared and arranged beforehand, without the 

 slightest reference to the condition of the affairs of the two republics, 

 in which the American legation finds itself, as has been learned from 

 the conversations of Mr. Eames with the undersigned. Such a pro- 

 ceeding is incompatible with the relations of friendship under which 

 both countries live. Of that friendship Venezuela has recently given 

 a valid proof by her signature to a treaty of commerce, amity, navi- 

 gation, and extradition, proposed to her by the United States, and now 

 awaiting ratification. Great and repeated were the efforts made by 



