Mr. Peraza to Mr. Blaine.
Washington, May 20, 1890.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of Your Excellency’s note of yesterday, whereby you were pleased to inform me that you had received a dispatch from the United States minister at London, in which he stated that, in pursuance of the instructions which Your Excellency had sent him, he had an interview with Lord Salisbury in regard to the restoration of diplomatic relations between Venezuela and Great Britain and the settlement of the boundary question by arbitration, and that Lord Salisbury, when apprised of the views of the United States Government, had informed Mr. Lincoln that he wished to consult the colonial office before replying to his suggestions.
I have already transmitted this news to my Government by cable. Although it does not contain a final decision, I do not doubt that it will be very pleasing to my Government, because it informs it of what it so eagerly desired, viz, that the United States Government has begun to lend its paternal good offices in this question with a decision that can not fail to be crowned with success. It will be a glorious thing for the United States Government to restore to this whole continent the tranquillity which it does not now enjoy, on seeing the sovereignty of a sister republic menaced by a European power. Such a result, added to those which have just been accomplished by the [Page 787] International American Conference, will immortalize the present administration, which will forever be blessed by the nations of South America.
The pretensions of the Government of Great Britain have now reached an extreme which can not be properly described in the courteous language of diplomacy. Your Excellency will judge of their enormity by merely running your eye over the two maps which I have the honor to transmit to you. One of these is a photographed copy of a map published by British engineers in 1817, the original of which is in the library of the New York Historical Society, and the other is the map presented by Lord Salisbury to Dr. Modesto Urbaneja, our minister, on the 10th of February last, with the three demarcations of boundaries which Lord Salisbury says constitute the conditions necessary to the settlement of the question.
These three demarcations are the fanciful line drawn by Schomburgk, in red ink, which takes possession of one of the mouths of the Orinoco, and concerning which Lord Salisbury says that there can be no discussion with regard to titles; the second, in green ink, extending still further into Venezuelan Guiana, concerning which Lord Salisbury says that arbitration maybe accepted; and the third line, in violet-colored ink, which extends as far as the extreme interior course of the Caroni, not far from the capital of our Guiana, and which constitutes the extreme claim of the British Government.
In 1817, 3 years after the conclusion of Great Britain’s treaty with Holland, whereby she first entered into possession of Dutch Guiana, the boundary between which and Venezuelan Guiana is the Esequibo River, the English laid claim to but a comparatively small territory in our Guiana in order to establish themselves at Cape Nassau, on the Atlantic coast, the possession of which territory was always disputed by Venezuela. The map to which I refer, which was published in Edinburgh in 1817, gives that demarcation.
I now beg Your Excellency to compare that claim with the three claims of Lord Salisbury’s map, and you will be convinced that they are wholly without foundation, for a line which advances into neighboring territory as years roll by may be anything but the result of rights or titles.
So unpleasant was the impression which these inconsistent claims on the part of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government made upon the United States Government in 1888 that, although they were not then so great as they now are, they induced Mr. Bayard to write to Mr. Phelps as follows:
In the course of your conversation you may refer to the publication in the London Financier of January 24 (a copy of which you can procure and exhibit to Lord Salisbury) and express apprehension lest the widening pretensions of British Guiana to possess territory over which Venezuelan jurisdiction has never heretofore been disputed may not diminish the chances for a practical settlement.
If, indeed, it should appear that there is no fixed limit to the British boundary claim, our good disposition to aid in a settlement might not only be defeated, but be obliged to give place to a feeling of grave concern.
Venezuela hopes that, as the case is now still more aggravated, and as the influence of the United States has been strengthened by the bonds which it has just established with its sister nations of America and by the earnestness with which these nations have manifested their desire that the question between Venezuela and Great Britain may be decided by arbitration, the steps taken by the Honorable Mr. Blaine will be more successful than those of his predecessor.
With sentiments, etc.,