THE VENEZUELAN BOUNDARY COMMISSIOX 100 



of the commission, which, however, is not new to the world, 

 having been published May 25, 1S97, as Senate Document No! 

 106, 55th Congress, 1st session. It is to contain also a report by 

 Professor J. F. Jameson, of Thrown University, on the Treaty of 

 Miinster of 1648, and also Professor Burr's rei)ort uj)on what he 

 found in the Dutch archives bearing upon the boundary matter. 

 Exact reproductions of those Dutch documents with translations 

 constitute the major ])art of volume 2. Professor Burr's report, 

 however, will tell a connected story of Dutch occupation and 

 doings in the disputed territory, as gathered from these old 

 manuscript chronicles of the Dutch. 



With the publication in the summer of 1897 of these four v(.l- 

 umes the labors of the Venezuelan Boundary Commission end. 

 The controversy, however, is not ended, l)Ut its settlement has 

 been relegated to a new tribunal— a tribunal of arbitration, to 

 be composed of five of the world's leading jurists. 



The commission, whose work now ends, it will be remembered, 

 is wholly a United States commission. The United States de- 

 vised it, created it, and maintained it; and it did this "to deter- 

 mine with sufficient certainty, for its own justification, what is 

 the true boundary' line between British Guiana and Venezuela." 

 It is a high compHment to the character of the commission that 

 both Great Britain and Venezuela promptly and cordialh' aided 

 it to the fullest extent by furnishing information fully and freely. 

 Neither was bound so to do, and neither had agreed to accept 

 its conclusions. But as time progressed it became clear that this 

 quasi or involuntary arbitration, if I may say so, might well be 

 turned into an actual arbitration — an arbitration where all the 

 facts could be sifted out, judicially weighed, and a just conclusion 

 reached. Accordingly, at the Lord Mayor's banquet in London 

 last November, Lord Salisbury announced that an agreement had 

 been reached by which the long-drawn-out controversy was on 

 its way to a peaceful, amicable, just, and final determination ; an 

 agreement to arbitrate had been reached. 



That the action taken by the United States some eleven months 

 before was a powerful agency toward securing this much-to-be- 

 desired end does not admit of doubt. Such is the prevailing 

 opinion. Such is the opinion of the commission itself, which 

 in its report says: "A wise and just view of the case is that the 

 commission has been a potent factor in bringing the two nations 

 into a consent to submit the matter in dispute to an arbitral 

 tribunal." 



