No. 471.
Mr. Frelinghuysen to Mr. Soteldo.
Washington, April 25, 1884.
Sir: I have had the honor to receive your note of the 10th instant in relation to the claim of Mr. John E. Wheelock against Venezuela.
After a careful consideration of your arguments, I am obliged to relinquish the task of refuting them in detail. The groundwork on which they rest being fallacious, the whole argument falls. You proceed on the assumption that the high federal court, to which it is assumed that Mr. Wheelock should have in the first instance submitted his claim, is a tribunal in every respect equal in its attributes and powers to the United States Court of Claims, and from this you infer that the jurisdiction of the two countries in this particular is identical, and that Venezuela prescribes for the injured alien the same judicial resorts as do the United States.
The Court of Claims, however, permit me to say, has no jurisdiction of the cases of aliens making claims of the nature of Mr. Wheelock’s. It has only jurisdiction of alien claims founded on statute or contract. There is no tribunal here which is competent to render judgment against the United States for personal damages occasioned by the act of a federal officer.
As I stated in my note of the 4th instant, those are matters for diplomatic settlement, and in default of agreement thereon by friendly arbitration.
I observe also that you take exception to my statement that the Government of Venezuela does not recognize the right of this Government to have recourse to diplomacy in order to secure the redress of a wrong suffered by one of its citizens who has been maltreated under circumstances of peculiar cruelty. Permit me to remind you that the representations of this Government have uniformly been confined, as a demand, to asking the execution of Venezuelan law against the aggressor.
Your Government claims that there has been no miscarriage of justice in the case. We think and aver that at every step of the case there has been an evident miscarriage of justice. As to the claim for indemnity, we have not demanded a fixed sum. We have diplomatically represented to. Venezuela that the circumstances appear to fully warrant the expectation that a tender of compensation for the wrong suffered will be voluntarily made to Mr. Wheelock.
Your Government pays no heed to this temperate and just suggestion, so put forth, and attempts to relegate the sufferer to the courts to the country. This seems to be a practical denial of the diplomatic recourse even for the amicable settlement of a question which this Government felt reluctant to press to the graver stage of a positively formulated demand for indemnity.
It has been the consistent effort of this Government, in dealing with this case, to keep the channel of diplomatic adjustment open. If it be closed by the Venezuelan Government denying our recourse thereto, our regret would be most keen, but at the same time the responsibility would not be ours.
This further correspondence in the ease will now be submitted to Congress.
Accept, &c.,