These citations are made for the purpose of rendering it evident to the government of Venezuela that the position of the United States in respect to the conclusive obligation of such awards as it now seeks to bring in question, is one long since assumed and steadily maintained by their executive and judicial departments without claiming that as against your government they are entitled to any greater force than belongs to the reasoning upon which they are founded.

International tribunals for the adjudication of private claims are created by governments in no expectation that they are to escape that possible admixture of error which is inseparable from all human institutions. They are resorted to because the governments concerned have either actually experienced, or have been forced to anticipate, the impracticability of their coming to an agreement upon the merits of such claims, and upon the methods of investigating them. However imperfect the expedient may prove, it is adopted in view of the dread alternative in comparison with which a partial failure to accomplish exact justice falls into insignificance. First among the great powers to introduce this beneficent mode of achieving the peaceful termination of international controversies, it is not for the United States to do or suffer aught that can impair its efficacy. The deliberations and judgment of a commission would be fruitless, if they only started questions for renewed discussion. They must be final or they must be nothing. We are compelled, therefore, to decline any examination of the correctness of the decisions upon the merits of the several cases decided by the Caracas commission, whether arrived at by the concurrence of the commissioners or by the award of the umpire, himself a citizen of Venezuela, to whom the convention in case of their disagreement committed the final adjudication of the case. We must for the same reasons decline to examine the expediency of the rules of procedure by which the commission thought proper to govern its investigations, and the assignment of evidence of its awards to the persons interested therein. All such persons may claim with show of reason, which it is difficult to refute, that they have a vested interest in the awards, indefeasible by the action of either or both the governments which surrendered to a common arbiter, without reserve, their entire jurisdiction in the premises.

Having thus eliminated from the discussion the errors which you allege in the decision of the commission, we are brought to those which relate to its personal constitution. The first of these is in effect that Mr. Talmage improperly and without reason refused to agree with his co-commissioner on the part of Venezuela in the nomination of an umpire. To this it is a sufficient answer that the convention anticipated that precise exigency, and provided the remedy by giving the selection to the diplomatic representative either of Switzerland or Russia in Washington. The second objection indirectly and argumentatively sug

decided in favor of the same parties, claiming from the commission, as their agent, the certificates issued to the heirs of Jacob Idler, to Seth Driggs, Clemencia de Willett, and Ralph Rawdon."

I understand your allegation to be only that Mr. Talmage, after having given opinions in favor of the claimants named, presented himself as their agent to receive the certificates of awards in their behalf, which in the cases named were made by the umpire. I do not understand you to aver distinctly that Mr. Talmage had at any time a pecuniary interest in the claims upon which he pronounced a favorable opinion. If, however, such is to be taken as the import of your language, I do not understand it to be averred that he had acquired or contemplated the acquisition of such interest at the time when he expressed his judgment upon the claims. You present no other evidence in support of the charge than the fact that he received the certificates as the agent of the successful claimants. This evidence, however, is inconclusive and unsatisfactory upon two grounds: 1. That Mr. Talmage should become the custodian of certificates by no means proves that he had any personal interest in the fund which those certificates furnished the means of reaching. You have adverted to the circumstance that the amount of the awards was in some instances to be divided between the claimants and their attorneys. It was quite natural that parties interested in the division and apportionment of an award should desire that the certificates should pass into the custody of a third person rather than into that of either of the interested parties. It was equally natural that the position and character of the commissioner should recommend him as a just and impartial trustee to guard the rights of both. 2. If it were conceded that the receipt of the certificates by Mr. Talmage is satisfactory evidence of his pecuniary interest at the time of such reception, it does not follow that he had acquired or contemplated acquir ing such interest at the time when he sat in judgment upon the claim. It might be imprudent in a judge who had faithfully and impartially discharged his duty in rendering an award, and had thus ceased to have any judicial relation to it, if he afterwards allowed himself to become pecuniarly interested in its payment; because it might expose him to the suspicion of having had that interest in view while exercising his judicial function. Such imprudence, however, falls far short of criminality, and in the case supposed would not impeach the competence of the judge or detract from the conclusiveness of his decision.

As we are bound in construing evidence to make every allowable presumption in favor of the integrity of a judicial officer, so in construing a charge against him we are not at liberty to infer that its meaning is wider than its language strictly imports.

It is not necessary for this government to deny that no man can be a judge in his own cause, or in one in which he has the minutest interest.

to present.

The charge indirectly suggested by your letter has not been regarded as sufficiently explicit to justify this government in calling upon Mr. Talmage for any explanation or defence of his conduct. We see no adequate reason to warrant us in consenting that the claims upon which awards have been made by the umpire should be again brought in question. We must continue to regard them as standing upon the same footing as the awards made by the commissioners, to which the government of Venezuela takes no exception, and to expect from that government in regard to all alike a faithful performance of the obligations which were assumed in the most solemn form by the convention of April 25, 1866. By the terms of that instrument a liberal extension was given to the period for the payment of the awards in consideration of the financial difficulties in which Venezuela had been involved in consequence of unfortunate internal dissensions. An instalment of the indemnity awarded by the commission has already become due to this government, and it has been pressed by the claimants to insist with urgency upon prompt payment. It has forborne to do so until it should have maturely considered the objections taken by the government of Venezuela to the proceedings of the commission. That reason for delay having now ceased, this government can no longer defer a compliance with the just demands of its citizens.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

Señor MANUEL MUÑOZ Y CASTRO, &c., &c., Ebbitt House.

No. 2.

Mr. Muñoz y Castro to Mr. Washburne.

[Translation.]

WASHINGTON, March 12, 1869.

YOUR EXCELLENCY: I had the honor to receive the letter of your honorable predecessor of the 3d of the present month, in reply to mine of the 12th February, previous. In it is made, with the support of sundry quotations, a declaration of what the government of the United States regards to be the nature and duty of tribunals of arbitration, and of their relation with the governments which institute them, coming to the conclusion that the decisions of such tribunals are definitive, or else amount to nothing. As a consequence of this absolute proposition, it follows that the government of the United States finds itself obliged not to enter into an examination of the righteousness of the sentence of the mixed commission which was established at Caracas; and as for defects

ན

ད་ Iཟོ་

པ ཡPPI

of my government, make null and of no effect the decisions of Mr. Talmage and Mr. Machado.

The principles which are developed in the letter from the department, about the nature of judgment by arbitration, are not the object of discussion; as a beneficial means of arriving at a peaceful termination of international controversies. Venezuela has not only applauded the efforts of the United States to implant it in the law of nations, but herself commends it in her fundamental law, and Venezuela not being herself a maritime and military power, which might rely upon its ability to seize at all events by force what it might not obtain by the power of reason, less still than the United States would she incline to anything that might bring into discredit the efficiency of arbitration. But let me be allowed to remark at this point, that the efficiency of this beneficent institution will be so much more worthy of trust and reliance in proportion to the zeal and care which nations may take in maintaining its purity, by not tolorating the abuses and vices which through unscrupulous and bad men might occur to convert it into a fearful weapon of rapine and injustice.

If whatever of evil there might be shut up in a judgment by arbitration, there should be no remedy but to shut ones eyes, and submit to the sentence, without examining the motives and the circumstances which produced it, an arbitration could scarcely be looked upon as a progress in the intercourse and traffic between nations; nor in many cases would their differences be less dreadful than the clashings of actual war. But by good fortune this does not pass beyond supposition, which although it seems as if derived from the absolute proposition of Mr. Seward that the finding must be definitive or amount to nothing; and the consequences which he declares therefrom with application to the case in controversy is, further on, controverted by Mr. Seward himself, as it indubitably is by universal reason.

It is admitted in the letter to which I reply that participation of the judge in the sums awarded by himself to the claimants would suffice to make such sentence null and void, and so the government of Venezuela believes; but it also believes that there is no reason to determine that such should be the only ground which might give a cause for the reversal of a sentence, because a violation of the oath taken by the judge is no less criminal, nor the fact of dictating a sentence without more to sustain it than documents which bear upon their face the stamp of deception and falsehood. I do not think it necessary here to repeat all that I stated in my letter of the 12th of February, about the fault which stains the arbitral sentence of the Caracas commission, but I cannot do less than call the attention of the present Secretary of State to the contents of that letter, about which perhaps he may form a judgment differing from that of the honorable Mr Seward I do not know whether in the necessity

་ས་པ་པས་

་་ ཨo ཨPPངས

uv

any sentence of my letter the assertion of the honorable Mr. Seward, that I had designated Mr. Machado "as the arbiter for Mr. Talmage," justified; but now that in passing mention must be made of this erroneous impression, I will not hesitate to state that in no other manner was the arbiter designated by public opinion. I showed that with the support of the arbiter Mr. Talmage dictated to the commission rules which made it impossible in complicated cases to give to the examination time materially needful-clear proof of the indifference with which that indispensable requisite for the correct administration of justice was looked upon. I showed that Mr. Talmage collected with zeal all reclamations; always inclined to concede everything, although in some cases what he claimed might appear small; and that the initiation for repelling even the most monstrous reclamations never was made by him; and it may be added that such was his zeal to empty the treasury of Venezuela that, usurping powers which the international convention never gave to him, he gave support and favorable sentence to one reclamation of the Italian subject, Abbiati, who he ought to have certified was not a citizen of the United States, for which reason the arbiter rejected it. I showed that, as well on the part of the American commissioner as on that of the arbitrator, there was, in the consideration of the claims, a failure to notice those facts upon which their decisions ought principally to rest. Respecting the claim of the heirs of Captain Clark, I brought to mind the precedent already existing of the decision pronounced by the commission in Ecuador, and the statement made by the American commissioner and minister of the United States in that country, Mr. Hassaurek, that that individual had deserved rather punishment than reward. The same subject was also dismissed without consideration from the board of arbitration on the part of New Granada, (now Colombia.) And I am now forced to recall the attention of the Department of State to this noteworthy matter; since it is really incomprehensible how the strange anomaly can exist, that there be, to the detriment of Venezuela, an especial code of justice which is not applicable to the sister republics of Colombia and Ecuador, and which tends to shield a crime according to the conscientious expression of the Commissioner and Minister Hassaurek. I also observed that, in the case of Nobles, Beales, and Garrison, none of the considerations which should influence the decision of a judge were had in view. The Venezuelan commissioner protested in due form against the competency of the tribunal; and, as I said in my first letter, the pretence that Venezuela shall pay what has been inconsiderately sentenced by the arbitrator would be equivalent to a pretence that the United States should pay the damages demanded by those who made contracts with the government of the so-called southern confederacy; that is to say, the damages, real or imaginary, which they have suffered from their non-fulfilment. But there is yet more to be said in the present