AVES ISLAND. 317 



such, use, tlien, indeed, might it be argued that they had made aban- 

 donment of it, since it seems to imply a tacit renunciation of the advan- 

 tages of ownership. But Mr. Eames never can succeed in vindicating 

 such a position, nor yet that of the Americans and other foreigners in 

 arrogating to themselves the rights of dominion over the island ; and, 

 certainly, strange would it be that being derelict, as is supposgd, and 

 being convertible to gainful uses, it never occurred to any nation, not 

 even to the United States, to which its acquisition would have been so 

 advantageous, according to Shelton, to take possession of it and reduce 

 it to its jurisdiction. It is well known that prescription rests on good 

 faith, lawful titles, continuous possession for length of time ; and that, 

 as there is no one qualified to determine its duration among States, 

 unless it be by mutual consent, many public writers do not admit it to 

 be an instrument for either the acquisition or the loss of rights, holding 

 that universal law does not sanction it, nor positive law introduce it ; 

 that, indeed, the powers frequently invoke it, and provide against its 

 effects by protests to secure their rights, which presupposes in them the 

 obligation of breaking their silence when that which they have no 

 intention of abandoning is usurped by any one; that their language, 

 on this head, has been various and contradictory, and that as no treaty 

 or no usage has determined the time required by prescription, nothing 

 could be gained by admitting it in mere theory. 



" Still, we must confess, that it is often difficult to apply usucaption 

 and prescription among nations when these rights rest upon a pre- 

 sumption derived from a diuturnity of silence. Every one knows that 

 it is generally very dangerous for a weak State to j^ut forth the merest 

 glimmer of pretension to the possessions of a powerful monarch. It 

 is, therefore, no easy thing to base a lawful presumption of abandon- 

 ment on the circumstance of a long silence. Add to this that the head 

 of a society generally not having it in his power to alienate what be- 

 longs to the State, his silence cannot work detriment to the nation or 

 to his successors, even though it were held sufficient to warrant a 

 presumption of abandonment on his part. For, in such case, the 

 question would be whether the nation have forgotten to supply the 

 silence of its chief, or whether it has participated in it by its tacit 

 a^jprobation . " (Yattel, Law of Nations.) 



Both regret and astonishment has Mr. Eames experienced that the 

 Secretary of Foreign Eolations should have said ' ' the Americans 

 could never complain of their expulsion, unless they could show that 

 it was lawful for them to enter on the island and export from it the 

 guano which it contains." 



What ! Does Mr. Eames forget that no one can justly deem himself 

 the owner of a thing of which he has possessed himself by virtue of a 

 title which, by its nature, cannot convey the right of property, nor 

 yet of a thing which he has wrested into his poAver without any title 

 at all? The observation was most natural when speaking of a claim 

 which is especially based on the circumstances of the Americans having 

 landed on the island, of their occupation of it, and their working upon 

 it — a thing that, it is assumed, any one had the right to do, and 

 which for many years had been done upon convenient occasions before 

 and since the existence of Venezuela, without the infringement of any 



