418 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



The British position was, in substance, that the Monroe 

 Doctrine had no bearing upon the boundary dispute in South 

 America; that that doctrine had been created to meet cer- 

 tain ends, and had long since fulfilled its purpose ; that the 

 interest and safety of the United States was in no manner 

 threatened ; and, therefore, the British-Venezuela quarrel 

 being no affair of the United States, the intervention of the 

 latter was wholly unwarranted. 



The two letters of Secretary Olney and Lord Salisbury on 

 this subject are most important documents in the historical 

 development of the Monroe Doctrine, and free quotation 

 from them cannot well be avoided. Only those parts of the 

 letters relating to the merits of the territorial claims are 

 omitted. 



Mr. Olney to Mr. Bayard. 



No. 804.] DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 



Washington, July 20, 1895. 



His Excellency THOMAS F. BAYARD 



Etc., etc., etc., London. 



SIR: I am directed by the President to communicate to you his 

 views upon a subject to which he has given much anxious thought 

 and respecting which he has not reached a conclusion without 

 a lively sense of its great importance as well as of the serious 

 responsibility involved in any action now to be taken. 



It is not proposed, and for present purposes is not necessary, to 

 enter into any detailed account of the controversy between Great 

 Britain and Venezuela respecting the western frontier of the 

 colony of British Guiana. The dispute is of ancient date Mini 

 began at least as early as the time when Great Britain acquired 

 by the treaty with the Netherlands of 1814 " the establishments 

 of Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice." From that time to the 

 present the dividing line between these " establishments " (now 

 called British Guiana) and Venezuela has never ceased to be a 

 subject of contention. The claims of both parties, it must be 

 conceded, are of a somewhat indefinite nature. On the one hand 

 Venezuela, in every constitution of government since she became 

 an independent State, has declared her territorial limits to be 

 those of the Captaincy General of Venezuela in 1810. Yet, out 

 of " moderation and prudence," it is said, she has contented her- 



