The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-12-18
THE cnNrROEEESY.
History of the Trouble Which Led Up to the Measase.

history or lAe lfOuDte " htch ASu CP iV the Message.
 ] The keynote of the trouble between Venezuela and Great Britain is found in communication which Diego B. Urbaneta, minister of foreign affairs at Venezuela, addressed, on January 26, l 1SS7 to F. E. St. John, British min ister of Caracas. It gave full his | tory of the controversy, and continued: There is not the slightest doubt that an extensive portion of Venezuelan ter ritory and the great artery on the north of the South American conti- nent, the Orinoco, are, de facto, under the dominion of Great Britain under the fragile preteXt that there is a dispute her majesty's government. The logical conclusion from the existence of a con troversy about the proprietorship of l lands and waters would be- at most, l the convenience of neutrallzing, by common consent, the places in litiga- ton pending the decision of same. But for one of the contending parties to de- eide upon the appropriation of the ob- | ject under controversy by himself and in contempt of the rights of the other, is by the light of all jurisprudence an unjustifable violation of the most sa l cred right of a nation; it is a deadly wound inflicted upon the sovereignty of the republic. Great Britain has re- l proved in "a similar case the self-same action which she to-day takes With 1 Venezuela.
 Venezuela has frequently proposed
 that the question be submitted to the decision of an arbitrator on rights, and her majesty's government has refused, alleging that this method cannot be ap- piled to controversy on limits. It has persisted in this refusal, although re- minded that by the conventions of 1927 and 1871 England herself referred to an arbitrator a dispute on limits between herself and the United States, one about her possessions in North America and the other in reference to the Canal of Haro, with the circumstance that, in the latter case, the proposal came from
 herself as many as six times"
 Whatever rights of territory England
 has on the northeast coast of South America rest on the treaty of London concluded with the Dutch in 1874, by
 which three provinces of Dutch Guiana
 respectively known as Berbice, Demer- ara and Essequibo, were ceded to Eng
 land. As relating to the present dis pute the question is, what is the west
 a,,Y4 Jap pf ITccar1,1ihn "a hn I,1ncf
 westerly of the provinces, which bor- ders on Venezuela The latter contro- versy contends that the boundary is the
 Esssquibo river and bases its claim on
 the following evidence: The treaty of Munster between Spain and Holland in 164S; by official notes of the Spanish colonial government of Cumana in 1742; by the Spanish Portuguese treaty of 1750; by the correspondence passed be- tween the Spanish colonial government
 and the authorities of the adjacent Dutch colony east of the Essequibo ill 175S; by the royal Spanish schedules in 1T6S; by official records of the Spanish
 cabinet in 1769; by official instructions from the cabinet at Madrid to the .Span-
 ish colonial authorities in Guiana, 1779;
 by the order in council issued by the
 Spanish cabinet in 17S0; by the official
 reports of the royal Spanish colonial
 commission of 17S8; by the treaty of Aranjuez of 1791, between Spain and Holland; by the official correspondence
 of the Dutch West India company of 1794; by the official correspondence of
 the British diplomatic agent in Cara cas in 1886, acknowledging Venezuela S
 right of domain on the Atlantic coast east of the Orinoca delta; by the for
 nal acknowledgements in 1841, by a Brit ish law court in Demerara, of Venezue- las undisputed jurisd ction over the Mo-
 TOGO river and by a similar formal ac-
 knowledgment by the authorities of British Guiana as late as 1874.
 England's claim of territory extends
 far beyond and to the west of the Esse-
 qulbo river and is defined by what is
 known as the Schomburgk line. The
 latter was run in 1S41 by Major Schom-
 burgk, an English commissioner, who made survey and planted stakes and
 bounds in the territory claimed by Ven-
 ezuela. The British government, on
 protests being made by the Venezuelan
 authorities, had the marks removed representing that they were established
 as an aid to an understanding and set tlefnent of the controversy, and not as a sign of empire. Later Lord Aberdeen disclaimed the Schomburgk line, and he proposed Moroco river as a compro- mise of the respective claims and the
 western boundary of British Guiana Venezuela, however, adhered to it's claim of the Essequibo river as the boundary, which it had inherited from Spain.
 England endeavors to support her } claim by the statement that forts were erected on the banks of the Pomaron : river in 1857, thus indicating that the
 Dutch must have had jurisdiction west of the Essequibo: by a concession said } to have been made to Dutch company in 1874; by a conflict between some Dutch and Spanish colonists on the Pc. 1 maron river in 179T, in which it is claim. ? ed that the Spaniards were defeated and finally by some alleged treaty be- tween Great Britain and the Indians } (names not siven) whereby England } engaged to protect the Indians against l white encroachment.'
 London. Dec. 1.-The foreign office has issued for publica ton the full tex of the dispatch sent by United States Secretary of State Olney to Anfba ssa. dor Bayard, togseaer with Lord Sails