AVES ISLAND. 237 



It is a mistake if it is supposed that all the claims stand on the same 

 footing, or are equally meritorious and just. 



With reference to the amount of damages claimed by Philo S. Shel- 

 ton and Sampson & Tappan, the department has on file the several 

 statements thereof made by them. The department has also the proofs 

 (depositions of witnesses and documentary) sustaining generally the 

 aggregate amounts claimed to be just. If further testimony, if further 

 proofs, setting forth particulars of details, should be considered 

 requisite, is respectfully suggested to the department as was sug- 

 gested by the claimants in 1855, that the matter be referred to the 

 Chamber of Commerce of New York or Boston, or to any respectable 

 merchants of those cities, to examine the same, take any additional 

 testimony produced, and make report to the department of the amount 

 justly due, by which the claimants will abide. It is well nigh impos- 

 sible to furnish evidence to the department in an authentic form except 

 by some such proceeding. 



With respect to the course to be pursued by the department in the 

 interim, if such measure is adopted, the claimants would respectfully 

 suggest that if the United States government would again dispatch a 

 public vessel to Venezuela, with an open letter to that government by 

 the hand of an agent, who should have the full power of the claimants 

 for an arrangement of the claim ; and if in such letter it should be 

 distinctly stated that all questions are foreclosed except the amount to 

 be paid, and referring the Venezuelan government to such agent as 

 authorized to arrange such amount, and that it was expected a just 

 settlement should be had immediately ; and that if, on the return of 

 such vessel, such settlement should not have taken place, the United 

 States would feel itself bound not to allow its minister to return to 

 Venezuela, and to tender the Venezuelan minister here his passports, 

 and that it should also feel bound to resort to the remedy provided by 

 the third clause of the thirty-fourth article of our treaty with that 

 country, I do not doubt would insure a prompt adjustment of the claim, 



Xhe misfortune in this case has been that in the incipient stages of 

 it, and until December, 1856, our minister at Caracas did not seem 

 fully to understand or appreciate its merits ; and hence it was not so 

 strenuously and positively urged upon the Venezuelan government as 

 the flagrancy of the outrage and its large amount demanded. 



The pertinacity with which the Venezuelan government insist upon 

 the capitulation by Gribbs to Dias, as precluding these claimants, it is 

 respectfully submitted, should receive emphatic rebuke from the gov- 

 ernment of the United States. The proof of fraud and duress in rela- 

 tion to that document cannot be disputed by the assertions of the 

 instruments of the Venezuelan government, who perpetrated that fraud 

 and committed the violence. 



But concede, arguendo, that this instrument was not tainted by fraud, 

 nor stained by duress, who ever heard jbhat agreement made Ijy an 

 agent in fraud of his principal, without authority from or consent of 

 that principal, destroying his very agency, yielding up the property 

 intrusted to him, &-c,, was valid and binding upon his principal? By 

 the common law and by the civil law and by every dictate of common 



r-~) 



