Mr. Palacio to Mr. Andrade.
Sir: Some organs of the English press have recently attributed to His Excellency Mr. Bayard, ambassador of the United States in Great Britain, the idea that the (in London so-called) incident of the Yuruan River has no connection with the boundary dispute between Venezuela and the colony of Demarara. The Government of Venezuela has thus far had no reason to give credit to the news; but if it is true, or if his excellency the ambassador has expressed anything more or less clear in that sense, it seems opportune to bring to the attention of the Secretary of State, as a proper means of carrying the matter back to its original condition, the proof that said matter, such as Great Britain apparently wishes or designs to consider it, so far from being foreign to the boundary question, is included in it as the part in the whole, as the effect in the cause, as the accessory idea in the main one, which gives it peculiar existence. It is well, before anything else, to remember the territory where the incident occurred, the circumstances which led to it, and the character given to the measures which the Government thought proper to take, when it heard of it, as required by its responsibility and in obedience to its duty as a faithful custodian of order and discipline in general. Of the details relating to these measures and of those connected with the event itself, the Department must have been informed by the communication addressed to you by Dr. Pulido on April 18th of this year, No. 495, a copy of which you handed to Mr. Uhl, together with an English translation of it on the 23d of May following.
The Government, from the outset, saw nothing in the matter but an act of insubordination committed by subordinate agents to the injury of several British subjects who inhabited a house on the bank of the Cuyuni River, to the ownership of which territory Venezuela has a valid title. The reparation made by the Government was made on the spot, and was as prompt and effective as the case demanded.
To propose now, as it is said England does, to confound the damage already repaired, which was sustained by the aforesaid inhabitants of the English house, with a violation of territory or with an alleged insult to the British authorities, would be to distort matters and to manifest a desire to convert into a boundary dispute what was nothing but an isolated occurrence, due to a mere act of disobedience, which was punished without delay.
The true nature of the incident which occurred on the 2d of January is already sufficiently known. If it is perverted in such a way as to make the matter the cause of a grave incident, this can be done only with a view to justifying, even though indirectly, the British jurisdiction over territory which Venezuela has always considered to be hers. Let it therefore be considered how impossible it is to separate, even for a moment, the so-called Yuruan River incident from the boundary question in the significance and extent which Great Britain apparently seeks to attribute to it.
This explanation is now considered to be highly important, and I therefore instruct you, in obedience to orders from the Chief Magistrate, to transmit it to His Excellency Mr. Olney, with whom you may, if he desires it, leave a copy of this dispatch, together with the English translation.
I am, etc.,