308 VENEZUELA AND AFTER 



tion. The conclusion of the note, however, 

 embodied a reiteration of the old decision, not 

 to submit to arbitration the claims to regions 

 within the Schomburgk line. 



If in substance and spirit Olney s note was 

 startlingly new, the response of Salisbury was 

 discouragingly old. If the changed position 

 and aspirations of the United States were by 

 the one put in so high relief as to be somewhat 

 coarse and repulsive, they were by the other 

 left wholly out of the modelling. If Olney 

 brusquely voiced the feeling of the youth who 

 had reached his majority and claimed a grown 

 man s estate, Salisbury sounded the old Tory 

 note of querulous impatience with the restless 

 and innovating spirit of the immature. No 

 doubt was left by the correspondence that the 

 two great English-speaking peoples were diplo 

 matically at the point of most serious tension. 



President Cleveland s demand having been 

 refused by the British Government, he referred 

 the whole matter to Congress, laying before that 

 body, on December 17, 1895, the despatches 

 above referred to, with a message announcing 

 his views as to the existing situation and as to 

 the course that should be pursued by the United 

 States. With regret that the British Govern- 



