In making these recommendations I am fully alive to the responsibilities incurred, and keenly realize all the consequences that may follow.
I am nevertheless firm in my conviction that, while it is a grievous thing to contemplate the two great English-speaking peoples of the world as being otherwise than friendly competitors in the onward march of civilization, and strenuous and worthy rivals in all the arts of peace, there is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice, and the consequent loss of National self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people’s safety and greatness.
The commission of inquiry was appointed. It promptly began and industriously pursued its investigations for many months, the governments of Great Britain and Venezuela willingly contributing to the success of the commission’s labors by placing at its disposal elaborate statements and all available evidence, while in the archives of Spain and Holland documents were made accessible that threw much light upon the remote origins of the controversy. But before the commission had finished its work, Great Britain and Venezuela, by the treaty of January 2, 1897, agreed to an arbitration. The labors of the commission were not in vain, however. It reached the conclusion that neither the extreme claims of Great Britain nor those of Venezuela were admissible, being unsupported by proofs of title, and the great mass of documentary evidence it had collected was of much use and value for the arbitral tribunal.
By the terms of the Pauncefote-Andradé Treaty, signed at Washington January 2, 1897, Great Britain and Venezuela agreed to the appointment of an arbitral tribunal “to determine the boundary line between the colony of British Guiana and the United States of Venezuela.” The tribunal was to “ascertain the extent of the territories belonging to, or that might lawfully be claimed by, the United Netherlands, or by the Kingdom of Spain, respectively, at the time of the acquisition of the colony of British Guiana,” in order to establish the chain of lawful title. Rules of procedure were prescribed in the treaty. Adverse holding for fifty years, or exclusive political control, as well as actual settlement of a district was to be considered as making a good title; recognition and effect were to be given to rights and claims resting on other grounds valid in international law; and such effect was to be given to the occupation, at the time of signing the treaty, of the territory of one of the parties by the citizens or subjects of the other, as the equities of the case and the principles of international law should be deemed to require. It was provided in article II that the tribunal should consist of five jurists. Those named on the part of Great Britain were Baron Herschel, and Sir Richard Collins of the Supreme Court of Judicature. Baron Herschel having died before the convening of the tribunal, Lord Chief-Justice Russell was named to fill the vacancy. On the part of Venezuela, Chief-Justice Fuller of the United States Supreme Court, and Associate-Justice David Brewer of that court, were named. The fifth member of the tribunal named by these four was Frederic de Martens, the Russian jurist, who became president of the tribunal.
The tribunal assembled in Paris on January 25, 1899. After various and necessary adjournments, it began the formal consideration of the case on June 15. After seven weeks of painstaking toil, in which the story of Spain’s earliest search for the gold of the West, the terms of the treaty of Münster, the law and practice of nations in respect to discovery, occupation, and settlement, and an intolerable mass and multitude of documentary and legal details pertaining to each and all of these matters, had been minutely examined and expounded for the information, but certainly not the edification, of the five learned jurists sitting in judgment in the case, the evidence of nervous strain and irritation to which I have referred in the beginning of this article was apparent. On the forty-seventh day Sir Richard Webster sarcastically invited the attention of ex-President Harrison to certain comments of Sir Travers Twiss on the Oregon case. “I had read Twiss on the Oregon case through long before I had the privilege of seeing you,” replied Mr. Harrison. “This investigation has been long and wearisome,” said General Tracy, but he reminded the tribunal that it involved the “investigation of four hundred years of history.” And on the fiftieth day Mr. Harrison, in closing his argument, said: “Counsel who addresses this tribunal comes to his work in a frame of weariness of mind and body, and he addresses judges who are weary.”
It was on the fifty-sixth day that the tribunal announced its award. The true divisional line, as determined by the unanimous decision of the five jurists, gave sanction, as has been said, to the extreme pretensions of neither party. A large area west of the Essequibo River, to which Venezuela, without warrant, had laid claim, was held to be British territory; but, on the other hand, valuable tracts within the Schomburgk Line were awarded to Venezuela, the most important being the region of which the coast-line runs from Barima Point, at the mouth of the Orinoco, to Point Playa. The confirmation of the title to this territory, as to which Great Britain had firmly refused arbitration, gave Venezuela exclusive control of the mouth of her great river and of both its banks. The vast area, including the rich gold-mines, which Great Britain had belted about by the audacious westward extension of her claims, went altogether to Venezuela.
From London “Punch” for December 28, 1895
“THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON!!”
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND: “Waal, Salisbury, sir, whether you like it or not, we propose to arbitrate on this matter ourselves, and, in that event, we shall abide by our own decision.”