The Secretary of State to Minister Russell.
Washington, November 10, 1905.
Sir: I have just telegraphed you as follows:
Reply to your dispatch of October 20 has been withheld pending conferences with representatives of Bermudez Company. Clyde Brown, representing that company, is now going to Caracas for the purpose of settling differences with Venezuelan Government if practicable. Do what you can to promote fair and reasonable settlement.
I was not willing to undertake to answer the questions of your dispatch of the 20th directly, because by doing so I might seem to be taking upon the shoulders of this government the negotiation of a settlement which, in my view, ought to be undertaken by the Bermudez Company itself. It is, however, the wish of the State Department to render every proper assistance within our power toward bringing any negotiation between the company and the Government of Venezuela to a conclusion which will be in accordance with substantial justice.
Prior to Mr. Calhoun’s visit to Caracas the Department had, necessarily, to proceed upon statements by interested parties regarding a great mass of facts, and these statements, although made in entire good faith, were of course liable to be colored by the feelings and opinions arising from self-interest and from the long-continued and heated controversy. Mr. Calhoun’s mission was, as you are aware, to secure an unbiased and dispassionate view of the entire field of the controversy, and all the acts and proceedings affecting the interests of the New York and Bermudez Company. Mr. Calhoun has not yet made his report. He has brought with him upon his return a great mass of notes from which he is now engaged in the preparation of the report. An informal conversation with him, however, immediately following his return, has produced upon my mind an impression that when the report is submitted it will appear that there were questions between the company and the Government of Venezuela appropriate for judicial decision, and upon the raising of which a situation was presented calling for an equitable adjustment of differences, and which can not properly be disposed of by a simple demand based upon the idea that all the right is on one side and all the claims of the Bermudez Company unimpeachable.
I have also a strong impression, derived from the same conversation with Mr. Calhoun, that the litigation in which these matters of difference have been dealt with has been conducted in an exceedingly harsh manner, and that, without undertaking to consider any question of technical legal right which may have been the subject or decision, the result has been a degree of injustice toward the company, which I [Page 1003] have great confidence the Government of Venezuela will recognize and remedy if the subject can be approached in a spirit devoid of that controversial and unfriendly quality which has hitherto characterized the treatment of it, owing, perhaps, to a considerable degree to the attitude taken by the company itself.
The proceedings by which the company has been deprived of the major part of its property have been, in their essence, proceedings for forfeiture. Passing by the question whether upon technical legal grounds there exists sufficient cause to sustain legitimate forfeiture, we may well urge upon the Government of Venezuela that it is hardly consistent with that sense of justice which should control nations in their treatment of all persons who subject their property and property rights to the control of national power to press causes of strict forfeiture beyond the actual injury done and to inflict losses wholly incommensurate with the occasion. You are familiar with the growth of equity jurisdiction under our own system of jurisprudence, having its origin in a sense of the injustice frequently wrought by perfectly unimpeachable legal judgments and in the desire of the sovereign to relieve unfortunate suitors from undue forfeitures and penalties and other harsh results following from the strict letter of the aw. It is perfectly competent for the Government of Venezuela to deal with the affairs of the Bermudez Company in this spirit of equity without in any degree admitting an impeachment of the validity of the judgments of the courts of Venezuela. It is especially easy for that government to deal thus with a case in which the government itself is the complaining party, for the complainant who has recovered a judgment can always limit its operation and rest satisfied with such degree of inforcement of it as he deems to be just. I wish you to urge upon the Government of Venezuela such a treatment of the present situation as being due to that sense of justice which should control the action of a great and powerful government and to that reputation for justice which every civilized nation prizes so highly.
There has been much evidence produced to the Department upon which the New York and Bermudez Company makes claims relating to the proceedings against them which will not be taken up for consideration until the submission of Mr. Calhoun’s report and which I hope, by reason of the settlement of the matters in controversy along the lines I have described, may never require further consideration.
I am, etc.,