The Department’s instructions for more than a year past, both to Mr. Carter
and to yourself, have shown the lively interest with which this matter is
viewed by this government, and the desire felt and repeatedly expressed that
a remedy should be urged for a state of things entirely inconsistent with
the prosecution of honest commerce and the building up of the intimate
commercial relationship between the United States and Venezuela which is so
much to the interest of both countries. Your dispatches on the subject have
shown a hopeful spirit on the part of the Venezuelan Government that justice
might be done in this matter.
It is thought to be self-evident that whatever abuses the revenues of
Venezuela may have to fear from irregular channels of trade cannot exist as
between that country and the United States in the presence of a wise
legislation there, providing that through invoices of shipments, certified
by the consuls of Venezuela in the United States, and verified by the like
officers in the port of transhipment.
Commerce by way of transhipment and transit is on many routes of
international intercourse recognized as an indispensable fact, to be
regulated
[Page 542]
and facilitated by
judicious legislation. A prohibitory measure, like that of which we have so
abundant cause to complain, cannot but be injurious alike to the country
which thus cuts itself of from profitable, and to that whose export trade is
so unreasonably curtailed.
Your last report on the subject intimated that favorable action on the part
of the Venezuelan legislature might be near at hand. It seems desirable that
you should continue to press the matter on the attention of the executive as
well, and ask that its influence be used to induce proper legislation in
this respect. There is reason to believe that President Guzman Blanco is
favorably disposed to obtain relief in this connection. That he should
exhibit such a disposition is only natural, in view of the repeated
evidences of friendship and esteem which his government has shown toward
ours, and which we have had pleasure in manifesting also in return. It may,
therefore, aid toward a final disposal of the question if, in addition to
your representations to the minister of foreign relations, you were to avail
yourself of any friendly opportunity of conversation with President Guzman
Blanco to impress him with the strong desire we feel that this unfair
discrimination should be done away with.
[Inclosure in No. 187.]
D. A. de Lima & Co., Lanman
& Kemp, and other New York merchants to Mr.
Frelinghuysen.
New
York, November 13,
1882.
Sir: The undersigned merchants, established in
the city of New York, engaged in the shipping and the sale of American
goods for and to the West India Islands and the importation into the
United States of South American produce, respectfully call your
attention to the great detriment brought to their trade by the
differential duties of an additional 30 per cent. levied by the
Government of Venezuela on goods imported into Venezuela from said
islands.
The proximity of Venezuela to the British island of Trinidad, the Danish
island of St. Thomas, and the Dutch island of Curaçoa, had made them,
after years of careful work, very valuable points of indirect connection
between the United States and Venezuela, through the agency of former
residents of those islands who subsequently established in the United
States.
By the establishment of the differential duties, the direct trade of the
United States with those islands and the indirect trade with Venezuela
have suffered material detriment.
Of the several sailing vessels that had been actively running between New
York and said islands, scarcely any remain in the line, and steamers
that formerly used to go every fortnight with full share of cargo for
those pores now hardly get enough freight to pay their continuing in the
trade.
While the business between New York and those islands is thus decreasing,
the direct trade with Venezuela gets no proportionate increase in any
but exclusively American products such as flour, lard, kerosene,
&c., or such articles as cannot begot from Europe, because the
largest number of houses in Venezuela are European firms which, engaged
for years in business with European markets, import from there all other
goods, such as cotton fabrics, machineries, agricultural implements,
tinware, boots and shoes, candles, soaps, lamps, glassware, perfumeries,
plated goods, clocks, watches, books, canned meats, preserved fruits,
liquors, matches, jewelries, ropes, blocks, oars, and other
ship-chandlery articles, straw paper, writing-paper, envelopes, wires,
furniture, trunks, sewing-machines, and scores of other articles which
it would be too long to enumerate and in which the United States, in
competition with Europe, had, of recent years, established very valuable
indirect connection with Venezuela through those islands.
In the like manner, the United States used to export to those islands
quantities of East Indian and Chinese goods from bonded warehouses here,
such as rice, mattings, fire-crackers, cassia, &c., all of which
those islands, through their established trade with the United States
and the greater facilities to get the same from here than from
[Page 543]
Europe, used to import
constantly from here to send to Venezuela. Said articles are now going
from Europe to Venezuela.
Further does the trade of New York suffer from the circumstance that a
great portion of the Venezuelan products, which formerly were purchased
by merchants of those islands for shipment to New York, are now taken by
European houses in Venezuela for shipment to Europe, owing to the lack
of traffic between those islands and Venezuela.
It may be well to observe that all those detriments which Venezuela is
thus causing to the direct trade between itself and the West India
Islands and to the commerce of the United States, in the indirect manner
above described, are likely to prove ultimately to the disadvantage of
Venezuela, as lines of steamers now running between the United States
and West Indian Islands, and touching at Venezuelan ports, and which
lines were established in connection with the trade of those islands
with Venezuela, are likely to seek employment in some combination of
trade with New Grenada.
Knowing the great regard in which the government at Washington is
deservedly held by the Government of Venezuela, we take the liberty to
request the honorable Secretary of State to use his good offices with
Venezuela, in order to annul the decree of differential duties on goods
imported from the West Indian Islands into Venezuela.
Respectfully.
(Signed by D. A. de Lima & Co., Lanman & Kemp, Foulke & Co.,
Bartram Bros., Iowa Barb Wire Company, Eugene Kelly & Co., Schultz,
Southwick & Co., H. B. Claflin & Co., McKesson & Robbins,
Colgate & Co., H. K. & F. B. Thurber & Co., and thirty-eight
other firms.)
