A GOLD PROSPECTING PARTY
ON DEBATABLE LAND IN BRITISH GUIANA.

While our past history shows that we have had only two wars with Great Britain, yet it shows also that talk of war has been heard fully a score of times. Long after 1812, we were extremely sensitive as regarded the nation that the majority of Americans looked upon as our hereditary foe, and the calls for war have been sounded in Congress and throughout the land far oftener than most people suspect. That such a calamity to mankind has been turned aside is due mainly to the good sense and mutual forbearance of the majority of people in both countries. England and the United States are the two great English-speaking nations. Together they are stronger than all the world combined. With the same language, the same literature, objects, aims, and religion, a war between them would be the most awful catastrophe that could befall humanity.

The last flurry with the "mother country" occurred in the closing weeks of 1895, and related to Venezuela, which had been at variance with England for many years. Until 1810, the territory lying between the mouths of the Orinoco and the Amazon was known as the Guianas. In the year named Spain ceded a large part of the country to Venezuela, and in 1814 Holland ceded another to Great Britain. The boundary between the Spanish and Dutch possessions had never been fixed by treaty, and the dispute between England and Venezuela lasted until 1887, when diplomatic relations were broken off between the two countries.

Venezuela asked that the dispute might be submitted to arbitration, but England would not agree, though the territory in question was greater in extent than the State of New York. The United States was naturally interested, for the "Monroe Doctrine" was involved, and in February, 1895, Congress passed a joint resolution, approving the suggestion of the President that the question should be submitted to arbitration, but England still refused. A lengthy correspondence took place between Great Britain and this country, and, on December 17, 1895, in submitting it to Congress, President Cleveland asked for authority from that body to appoint a commission to determine the merits of the boundary dispute, as a guide to the government in deciding its line of action, insisting further that, if England maintained her unwarrantable course, the United States should resist "by every means in its power, as a willful aggression upon its rights and interests, the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands, or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction over any territory, which after investigation we have determined of right belongs to Venezuela."

There was no mistaking the warlike tone of these words. The country and Congress instantly fired up and the land resounded with war talk. Congress immediately appropriated the sum of $100,000 for the expense of the commission of inquiry, and two days later the Senate passed the bill without a vote in opposition. The committee was named on the 1st of the following January and promptly began its work.

But the sober second thought of wise men in both countries soon made itself felt. Without prolonging the story, it may be said that the dispute finally went to arbitration, February 2, 1897, where it should have gone in the first place, and it was settled to the full satisfaction of Great Britain, the United States, and Venezuela. Another fact may as well be conceded, without any reflection upon our patriotism: Had England accepted our challenge to war, for which she was fully prepared with her invincible navy, and we were in a state of unreadiness, the United States would have been taught a lesson that she would have remembered for centuries to come. Thank God, the trial was spared to us and in truth can never come, while common sense reigns.

COUDERT. WHITE. BREWER. ALVEY. GILMAN.
VENEZUELAN COMMISSION.
Appointed by President Cleveland, January, 1896, to determine the true boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1896.