Mr. Soteldo to Mr. Bayard.
Washington, June 29, 1885. (Received June 30.)
Most Excellent Sir: I have the honor to inform your excellency that my Government has been pleased to approve the arrangement made by me with your excellency as a settlement of the claim brought several years since by John E. Wheelock, on account of the ill-treatment which he had received from a police commissioner in the mining district of Guayana, Venezuela.
My Government, nevertheless, desires on this occasion to appeal to your excellency’s sense of rectitude, to the end that it may not be understood that, in making this payment, which it does out of pure deference to the great people of the United States, it accepts the precedent that any one who considers himself injured or aggrieved by the acts of public functionaries, and still less by those of private individuals of the nation, may disregard the ordinary means of redress, i. e., the competent courts of the country, and have direct recourse to the diplomatic interference of his Government as a means of securing reparation, when, according to the laws of Venezuela, as well as those of every other country, it is the province of the courts of justice alone to redress the grievances of complainants in cases similar to that of Mr. Wheelock, the proper investigation and judicial examination of the facts of a case being impossible otherwise than by means of judicial proceedings, which are the safeguard of individual rights, as they are that of the social order of states.
I beg your excellency to believe me when I assert that the disorders and abuses which would accrue to the people of Venezuela, and, I may add, to those of the other Spanish-American Republics, front the fatal abuse of seeking the redress of injuries suffered by individuals of foreign nationality directly, by way of diplomacy, without submitting [Page 934] them to the laws and competent courts, would so undermine their welfare and their very existence, their financial system and every vital element of sociality and good government, that, however much it might be desired to comply with the requirements made, it would be impossible to continue to do so without seeking an efficient remedy for the evil.
Allow me to call your excellency’s attention to my previous communications on this subject, and to ask, in the name of my Government, the co-operation of that of your excellency, with a view to arresting this evil at once, since, while it exhausts our revenues and frequently disturbs our reciprocal international relations, to the detriment of the great interests of our countries, it gives rise to interminable abuses and to such demoralization that it has compelled us to enact special laws for the regulation of all matters connected with such claims, thereby rendering it impossible even for the Executive to take cognizance of and settle such questions, it being his duty to refer them to the judicial branch of the Government, which alone has power to enforce the laws in private cases.
Similar statements were made by my predecessor, who transmitted, to your excellency’s Department copies of the laws in force in Venezuela relative to claims of foreigners and natives of the country.
I am ready to deliver to your excellency the first of the bills of exchange, at sixty days, for $3,000 in United States money, which I have received from my Government, and which I have ordered to be accepted at once. I will place it in your excellency’s hands, hoping you will be pleased to accede to the wishes expressed in this note, so that the evil referred to may be remedied.
I gladly renew, &c.,