434 AVES ISLAND. 



ernment of the United States would tolerate for a moment sucli course? 

 I will go further, and ask if a public officer should violate the sub- 

 treasury law, and misappropriate public money to his own use, and 

 thus under such law should become a criminal, and upon dismissal or 

 resignation of his office should run to the residence of either of the 

 very respectable diplomats named, whether the flags of Eussia, France, 

 or England, laid in triple folds on the steps of such residence to stop 

 the ingress of a police office to arrest the criminal, would not be kicked 

 out of the way or trampled upon by such officer, whichever mode might 

 be supposed to manifest the most contempt for such presumptious in- 

 terference? And I confidently ask, whither, in such case, the federal 

 government would not sustain such officer? 



If the position I maintain be not true ; if the extravagant preten- 

 sions- of the diplomatic representatives in Venezuela be allowed ; then 

 I ask, what is there that preventa a foreign minister at Washington, 

 if he can inveigle an American citizen, male or female into his house, 

 from holding him or her in perpetual duress and imprisonment there, 

 in defiance of a writ of habeas corpus f It is no answer to say that a 

 foreign minister who would thus act would be dismissed instanter, for, 

 by the law of nations, even upon such dismissal, whatever the privileges 

 and immunities that attach to his person and suite continue till he has 

 had time to return home. 



I think that upon a careful review of the circumstances which have 

 occurred in Venezuela, the President and yourself will be satisfied 

 that the opinion expressed in the commencement of this communica- 

 tion of their deserving the pointed notice of the federal government, 

 will be concurred in ; and I trust you will regard the facts I have 

 stated as to my position and interests and feeling as a full apology 

 for calling your attention to the subject. The principles with refer- 

 ence to this alleged right of asylum should be laid down distinctly to 

 the American representatives abroad, and especially to those accredited 

 to the Hispano-American republics south of us. In those States the 

 residences of the foreign representatives, in case of revolution, seem 

 to have been regarded for many years as a kind of political alsatia for 

 all the unfortunate political rogues, when they have to give place like 

 Pharaoh's fat kine, to lean political kine of the same character. I do 

 not mean this last allusion to apply to the new Venezuelan function- 

 aries, several of whom I know personally, and who are men of unblem- 

 ished character, but the allusion is just with respect to Mexico and the 

 States of Central America and others. The laughable idea seems to 

 have obtained in these States that the house of a foreign minister was 

 covered with a sanctified halo, like the holy altar of the Temple of 

 Jerusalem, from the horns of which the criminal could not be wrested — 

 with the additional privilege, however, of feeding freely at the expense 

 of the minister while using his house as a sanctuary. All the doors 

 and windows of the Temple of Janus seem now to be open ; war rages 

 in China, India, Mexico, Peru, Chili, and Europe is a smothered vol- 

 cano. Ere long the ill-feeling so manifestly existing between England 

 and France may result in hostilities, which event would cause the still 

 unquenched fires of revolution on the continent to burst forth with a 

 violence exceeding any former efforts of the people to change their 



