THE VENEZUELAN COMMISSION. JUDGE BREWER of the Supreme Court is a man of solid reputation for learning and impartiality. It is believed by those who know him that Judge Alvey possesses similar qualifications. President Gilman of Johns Hopkins University and ex-President White of Cornell are too well known to need description. Mr. Coudert was one of the American counsel in the Bering Sea arbitration, and is understood to be a supporter of the President's contentions in the Venezuela dispute. Looking at the character of the commission as a whole, it seems to portend peace.

These commissioners are to "investigate and report upon the true divisional line between the republic of Venezuela and British Guiana." They are not to be envied. The task set for them is not to

consider the actual condition of affairs, past and present, and suggest a fair and reasonable boundary, with a view to reconciling the conflicting interests of the British colonists and the Venezuelans. They are to find the "true divisional line." They might as well search for the true boundaries of Liliput; for there never has been such a line. If they could go as mediators, for the purpose of bringing both sides to agree on a compromise, their going would at least have a humane and rational motive. Unfortunately, our, Government, by its mismanagement of the whole matter, has condemned them to go with an attitude of threatening and hostility towards one of the parties, and has limited their function to a very narrow всоре.

As regards the basin of the Essequibo and its tributaries, an impartial commission would probably have no hesitation in pronouncing the English claim well founded. The old and generally accepted rule that, in the occupation of new regions, possession of a river at its lower course carries with it the sovereignty of its upper waters and tributaries, gives a clear principle for the decision of the Cuyuni question. So conscious are the Venezuelans of the weakness of their case at this point, that they have felt themselves compelled to maintain the obviously untenable contention that the Dutch did not really hold the Essequibo-that they only held "up to it." Now nothing can be clearer than that the Dutch held both sides of the river. No reasonable man can read even the Venezuelan case without seeing that very clearly. As to the title to the wilderness of the Essequibo basin, then, there can hardly be much difficulty. A boundary based on this principle would undoubtedly be awkward for Venezuela; but that our commissioners are not to consider.

Unfortunately, the possession of the upper basin of the Essequibo is not the burning part of the controversy. The real difficulty arises as to the line of division on the coast. The Venezuelans adduce a variety of treaties and records, with a labored and declamatory effort to

show that they prove something in their favor; but the result falls lamentably short of a demonstration that the Venezuela claim is good. Their argument rests on an assumption for which they can hardly expect much favor in the United States-the assumption that the whole continent of South America belonged to the Spaniards, and that no other people could acquire a legitimate title to any part of it except by cession from Spain. By a constant use of this assumption, they ask us to hold that Venezuela, as the heir of Spain, has a just title to everything in the region of the Essequibo and the Orinoco which Spain cannot be shown to have ceded to the Dutch. Strike out this fundamental assumption, and their whole case is gone. If the contestants stand on equal terms, if we adopt the just principle that proof of occupation is as necessary for Venezuela as it is for British Guiana, in order to make good a claim, then we are forced to the conclusion that Venezuela's contention is as empty as it well could be.

66

Evidence of occupation by Spain of any post or place between the Orinoco and the Essequibo is wholly lacking in their voluminous case. Such evidence of occupation as this supplies goes in favor of the Dutch. Their papers make it clear that the Dutch had a fort on the Pomeroon, a small river of the disputed coast, and that they used the interior passages between that point and the Orinoco. Further, it is pretty clear, even from the Venezuelan evidence, that the Dutch had a hold of some sort on the mouth of the Orinoco. The Venezuelans endeavor to meet these facts by asserting that whatever the Dutch held between the Essequibo and the Orinoco was usurped"; that their occupation therefore gave no title in the absence of cession by the original owners, the Spanish. Fancy the smile of an old Dutch skipper at the suggestion that the Dutch must humbly ask leave of Spain before occupying wild lands in America. If the English and the Dutch had proceeded on that principle, America would have been a very different country to-day. The two treaties on which the Venezuelans rest so much have simply nothing to help our commissioners in fixing the "true divisional line," because neither of them says anything about a line. The treaty of Munster of 1648 was primarily a very tardy acknowledgment by Spain that her rebellious Dutch subjects had made themselves an independent nation. It further provided that both parties should keep what ever territories they possessed in America at the date of the treaty. But it makes no mention of the limits between their possessions, has not a word about boundaries. It pledges Holland not to take any more land from Spain, but it leaves Holland free to acquire any lands not occupied by Spain. To say that it binds Holland not to extend over the wild lands between the Essequibo and the Orinoco is to beg the whole question, for it is to assume that

Spain was occupying that territory, and for such occupation not a tittle of evidence has been produced.

The other treaty on which Venezuelans place chief reliance, the one which they say has "insuperable probatory force" in their favor, is that of Aranjuez, made between Spain and Holland in 1791. This was simply an extradition treaty in which mutual return of fugitives is agreed on, between the Spanish settlements on the Orinoco and the Dutch settlement on the Essequibo. But it tells us nothing as to boundary between these settlements. The Venezuelans profess to see in it insuperable proof that the Essequibo was the boundary; and in this their patron, Senator Lodge, seems disposed to follow them. But the treaty is quite as favorable to the conclusion that the Orinoco was the boundary. A case that needs such inferences for its support must be in desperate need of materials.

One important piece of evidence as to actual boundary seems to have escaped both the Venezuelans, who offer it, and Senator Lodge, who avows his impartial study of the whole matter. It is found at page 26 of the Venezuelan case, as published in volume ii., Senate documents for 1888. We will add that it is the only clear bit of evidence as to the old boundary that is to be found in the whole mass of papers The document in which it submitted. occurs is a Spanish royal order of the year 1780, in which were established rules to people the province of Guiana and to occupy lands." Here is the opening sentence of the Venezuelan account of this royal order:

"It is there declared, in the first place, that it was of the most importance to secure the limits of the said province, which commenced at the windward of the fall of the river Orinoco into the sea, on the border of the Dutch colony of Essequibo."

This, we repeat, is the only clear bit of evidence as to the old boundary between Dutch and Spanish that can be found in the whole collection of papers. It is therefore somewhat precious, both as to its date and the source from which it comes. It leaves no doubt that in 1780 the Spanish Government admitted the extension of the Dutch possessions to the mouth of the Orinoco. We commend the extract to Mr. Lodge's attention.

There is one trick of the Venezuelan spokesmen in which Mr. Olney and Mr. Lodge diligently copy them. This is the device of representing every offer of compromise made by England at any time as her "extreme claim." We are not at all concerned to justify England, but we think she is entitled to have her case truthfully represented. We owe it to ourselves, if not to her, to state the case as it actually stands and has stood. England's claim, as a claim, has always been just what it is now. Her claim as of right has always been that she was entitled to the basin of the Essequibo and to the coast as far as the Orinoco. Lord Aber. deen appears to have stated it so to For

tique in 1844. It is true that, in his effort to make a peaceful settlement with Venezuela, he offered concessions in order to fix a boundary of mutual convenience. His offer was open to Venezuela for six years, and, not having been accepted, was withdrawn in 1850. At the time of making it, notice was given that it implied no abandonment of the larger claim of right. The same was true of every later offer of a compromise line. To represent these offers as identical with the whole claim, and to say that "the claim" has been enlarged, or "developed" from stage to stage, is only the trick of the pettifogger. Mr. Olney ought to have left it to the Venezuelans.

DE DOCTRINÂ AND DE FACTO. We have no doubt many a simple-minded Jingo will be surprised to hear that in the negotiations for the only application of the Monroe Doctrine to Spanish-American affairs which we have ever made--the expulsion of the French from Mexico-there was no mention of the Monroe Doctrine at all. Neither Mr. Seward, who was in the State Department, nor Mr. John Bigelow, who conducted the correspondence in Paris, said a word about the Doctrine. They approached the situation from the de-facto side solely. A foreign army was imposing on the Mexican people a foreign ruler and a new form of government by

force. Mr. Seward said he did not undertake to dictate to the Mexican people what kind of government they should have. They might have Maximilian if they pleased, but they must be free to choose, and therefore the French troops should be withdrawn. In this Mr. Seward was adhering strictly to the ground taken by Calhoun in 1848 in the Senate, when, contesting the very use now made of the Monroe Doctrine, he said:

"It goes infinitely and dangerously beyond Mr. Monroe's declaration. It puts it in the power of other countries on this continent to make us a party to all their wars; and hence I say, if this broad interpretation be given to these declarations, we sball for ever be in

volved in war. But no general rule can be laid down to guide us in such a question. Every case must speak for itself. Every case must be decided on its own merits. Whether you will resist or not, and the measure of your resistance-whether it shall be by negotiation, remonstrance, or some intermediate measure, or by a resort to arms-all this must be determined and decided on the merits of the question itself. This is the only wise course. We are not to have quoted on us on every occasion general declarations to which any and every meaning may be attached."

This is exactly what is now happening. Everybody who has the handling of the Doctrine is "developing" it to suit himself.

Now there is nothing more dangerous, not to say disastrous, for any nation than attempting to live de doctrinâ instead of de facto. Doctrinal government has all the inconveniences of theocratic government, because doctrines do not change with circumstances or make allowance for human necessities. The Government of

Turkey is a doctrinal government, that is, is ruled by a "sacred law," which makes all reforms in the state impossible and has led to the ruin of the Ottoman Empire. Doctrinal government, too, was tried by the Puritans in England and here, and perforce abandoned as unsuitable to modern societies. Its leading characteristic is an à-priori rule of conduct which leaves no room for the play of convenience or policy, or considerations of time or place, and takes no note of facts. The Monroe Doctrine, for instance, assumes that now, as in 1823, the Spanish-American states are in imminent danger of conquest at the hands of European Powers. The changes of seventy years both here and abroad make no more impression upon it than on the Koran. When the President hears of a dispute between a European Power and a Spanish-American state, it compels him to assume sinister designs on the part of the former, and make his preparations for war accordingly in advance of any inquiry as to facts. Under de-facto government, the first thing he would do would be to ascertain the facts and be guided by the result in his subsequent action. Under the Doctrine, Great Britain is a giaour, whose designs are always, under the sa cred law, open to suspicion, and he pronounces her guilty before investigation. The Doctrine in like manner produced Secretary Olney's despatch, which was really a sermon, not treating of actual facts-in truth, full of statements which were not facts at all, but developments of a sort of divine law, such as one hears in the pulpit, and which, while full of edification, is totally unsuited to the needs

and risks of actual life.

If any one thinks we are overstating, in this description of the position which the Monroe Doctrine has come to occupy in the mental furniture of the average Jingo, we advise him to read the articles in the country papers, and the occasional speeches of politicians, and the resolutions of Jingo clubs called out by the present crisis. He will find the Monroe Doctrine treated very much like the Ten Com mandments, as part of the foundation of national life, behind which no one can go in tracing out our foreign policy. Not one in one hundred knows what it is, or what it means, or how or where it should be applied. But all agree that it imposes on all rulers an attitude of hostility to foreign Powers and calls for what is termed "a vigorous foreign policy." Asking a Jingo whether the Monroe Doctrine was a good thing to live under, and whether it would not be better to live under the facts of each year, would be very like asking the Sheik-ul-Islam whether the English common law would not be a good substitute for the Koran. It marks you as a "bad American," a paid emissary of some foreign Power. And yet, seeing the use that has been made of it by one of the most conservative of our Presidents and by a corporation lawyer from Boston, one of the most cautious of types, is it rash

to say that it contains in it the seeds of endless misery and turmoil for the American people? As now used and interpreted, it might do for a conquering horde like the Ottomans, or a strictly pastoral people like the Paraguayans, but for a people with vast commerce and a huge edifice of credit, it contains the sure seeds of decline and destruction.

Daniel Webster's test of the necessity of interference in Spanish-American affairs was "manifest and imminent danger to our essential rights and our essential interests." The notion that we cannot perceive this when it arises, and act accordingly, without a "doctrine" behind us, would be diverting if its consequences were not likely to be so grave. What these consequences are likely to be, was well pointed out by Calhoun, in speaking of the interpretation then (1848) put on the Doctrine by some, and now adopted by many of us, when he said:

"And if it should ever become so to the wide extent to which these declarations have been interpreted to go, our peace would ever be destroyed; the gates of our Janus would ever stand open. Wars would never cease."

THE AFRICAN TROUBLE. ALTHOUGH the news of Dr. Jameson's filibustering expedition against the Boers of the South African Republic has taken the world by surprise, it is very much what one might have expected from the history of that region during the past six or seven years. The Boers have a restricted suffrage-that is, it is confined to males resident in the Republic before 1876, or who took an active part in the war of 1881 with the British, and their children from the age of sixteen. These form a class apart, of "first-class burghers," and elect the President and the commandant of the militia. The "second-class burgh. ers" are a class composed of naturalized aliens, who can become first-class burghers only by a special resolution of the Chamber after twelve years' residence. Two years' residence and the payment of $10 are necessary to naturalization. The total population, native and naturalized, in 1894 was 370,148, about equally divided between the sexes; but no very reliable census has been taken. Now, these firstclass burghers being mainly Dutch Calvinists, and excellent fighting men of the type of Joshua and Gideon, it can be readily imagined that they do not smile upon the 30,000 or 40,000 adventurers, mostly English, who have swarmed into the gold and diamond fields which, unfortunately for the Boers, have been discovered in the territory of the Republic. These men, who have done great work in developing the resources of the country, and have filled its treasury to overflowing with their taxes, are, however, shut out from all share in the government, and are not provided by it with police, schools, roads, or any of the ordinary instrumentalities of civilization. Moreover, they are

and Byron both could, and were besides driven by their demon to do so. Tennyson, a far inferior natural power to either of the three, can; but, of the moderns, Goethe is the only one, I think, of those who have had an existence assujettie, who has thrown himself with a great result into poetry."

Now, it is altogether certain that such a standard, accepted as it is doubtless coming more and more to be, is giving a new meaning to the phrase," poésie oblige," and is proving fatal to at least two types of poetry and poets. One of them is what we may call the business poet, who produces his poems in the spirit of the Englishman who said to Canova's son that he supposed he would carry on his father's "business." Southey is perhaps the best example of the plodding, industrious poet, doing his daily stint with the conscientiousness and set face of a bicycler completing his "century." He always gave good measure-not a line scamped, his butter-woman's jog trot never easing down into a walk for twelve thousand verses. He would lay out his Roderick the Goth or his Madoc the Celt with the precision of a military engineer, and would plough his way through to the bitter end without remorse. Seizing his pen before breakfast (as if, as Bagehot says, any man could write poetry before breakfast ?), he would go on for hours turning out a good, sound, honest, perfectly business-like, and deadly dull article of poetry. If we have not changed all that, we have at least made it impossible that such a man should longer be called a great poet. Not of such a poet or such poetry was Matthew Arnold thinking when he asserted that the future of poetry is immense.

Nor was he thinking of another and larger class of poets, more numerously and assertively with us. We mean those of a certain natural poetic sensitiveness, who often charm us in their youth with their fine perception, their responsiveness to nature and art, and who lure us on to expect great things of their maturer powers. But this early promise they never fulfil. They remain at forty or fifty essentially immature, always in search of external sensations, of novel and taking themes, singing not because they must, but because they want to. Nowhere in their verse do we find the "breath and finer spirit of knowledge." All too seriously as they take themselves, they fail because they do not take the poetic calling seriously enough. They imagine that good intentions may do in place of strenuous thought and selfdiscipline, that poems to uplift and sustain may be struck off extempore, or in the intervals of restless activities, professional, social, or philanthropic.

Mr. Austin appears to be a union of both types. He has written a lot of long poems of good marketable texture, but you have to rummage the dictionary, not your memory, to find even their titles. In the course of a long existence assujettie he has produced much descriptive and mildly exclamatory verse. Of the tearing himself to pieces in order to unite perfection of thought and feeling with perfec

THE EASTERN QUESTION.

ROME, December 22, 1895. THE sudden halt in the English action in the Armenian redemption has surprised every one, and irritated some of the political agencies which had hoped, for various and different reasons, to see England plunge into the solution of the interminable and insoluble Eastern question, and are correspondingly either dismayed or disappointed by the sudden and hitherto unaccountable recoil from the advanced position Lord Salisbury had taken. It is well known that Russia had at all times opposed the English plans, because they promised a solution of the problem of what to do with the Sick Man, by eliminating the cause of the malady, viz., the gangrene of Mussulman misrule-deposing the Sultan and imposing a ruler who would have to admit the right of Europe to dictate the conditions of government where it had the duty and the charge of protection; or of finally dividing the country according to the general interests of the protecting Powers and of the populations. I suppose that it may be taken as indisputable that there were those among the powerful, if not among the Powers, who desired that England should precipitate the eternally impending conflict in Europe, to give them a chance to settle some outstanding accounts of their own; and others who really desired the final regula tion of the Eastern question in the real interests of European tranquillity. Others there were who fully expected, without any especial interest, that England, having put her hand to the plough, would go through the furrow. All were alike surprised at the sudden halt. Writing to an esteemed correspondent in London, one of the oldest and best informed journalists of England, I had expressed some of these feelings as entertained here and by myself, as warmly interested, through past expe riences, in the Turkish problem, and was sur. prised to receive from him the following reply:

"It is never of much use to prophesy in politics, but I venture to differ with you about Turkey. It is the old story. England is always defeated, as she was about Egypt, until suddenly she strikes some tremendous stroke, and then the world says, Who would have thought it? Of course if Mr. Cleveland is seeking war with us, all calculations are vain; but if not, ! venture to say that nothing but the removal of this Sultan can save Turkey from partition. Very slowly and very silently the English are getting to their white heat. However, it is useless arguing about the future. At present the only thing certain is that we are going to add two millions a year to the grant for the navy."

Not having been looking westward for some time, absorbed in Eastern questions, I had no knowledge of the controversy, rather than negotiations, going on between the United States of America and England with regard to Venezuela, and I replied, supposing I knew somecould be no danger of such a fire in the rear, thing of public opinion in America, that there and that nothing in the Venezuelan question justified a fear that the United States would provoke a quarrel when this so important question was pending of the existence of mil

It seems that I was mistaken, and now I recur to an earlier letter of the same respected correspondent, written in November, in which occurs the following passage:

"If you will read attentively the latter part of the speech of Lord Salisbury at the Mansion House, you will see that in his own mind be has doomed the Ottoman Empire, and he has a majority of 152. I dare say you know, better than I do, that the confidential reports to this Government represent the massacres in a much worse light than the papers do.* The Sultan bas resolved on the extermination of the Armenian people. I expect some 'incident' hourly which will bring matters to a head-perhaps a great massacre of American missionaries, in which case we should act instantaneously, even if all Europe opposed and threatened us. Inferior Turks know nothing of America, and are furious with the missionaries."

The writer of the above is an eminent Liberal, not a partisan of Salisbury, a consistent and devoted Christian, and, like the greater part of the English people, interested in the work of our missionaries and in the pure hu. manity of the Turkish problem. The position of the English nation was greatly controlled by this sentiment, and perhaps, of all the late great movements of English public opinion, this was the least selfish and profoundest in its appeal to the best part of the English nature. Adequately supported, it must have settled the question of how long Christian Europe would let the slaughter of unoffending Christians be

carried on by a fanatic Sultan, served by a bloodthirsty mob and an equally bloodthirsty and fanatical soldiery, under the protection of the Christian Powers. From Russia nothing was to be hoped for, as the Russian (people or Government) detests the Armenian only less than does the Turk; and as the Armenian is the most civilized and teachable of the many races in Asia Minor, he is that one who will most easily be brought to the work of putting in order the reformed Empire-which does not suit the schemes of Russia.

Thanks to President Cleveland and his fire in the rear, England has been stopped in her benefaction, and it is Christianity, not English interests, which must pay the bill; for, with this nefarious attack at such a critical mo. ment, it is out of the question that England could allow herself to be engaged in any difficulty on the other side of the Atlantic. Eng. land has only to do her best that the attempted solution shall not lose ground and human interests go backward, and hope in the spring to be able to resume the action where it was left off, with the tide perhaps at the ebb, while it was before at the flood, with Russia thoroughly prepared and her ascendency over the Sultan assured beyond any contest. The missionaries are not murdered because the Power that could have protected the Armenians, and would not, would have the missionaries protected for fear of the intervention becoming more prompt and effectual; but the murdering and outrage go on as steadily if not as multitudinously as before, and the extermination of a Christian people goes on from day to day systematically and deliberately, though in such a way as to permit the great Powers not to be driven, despite themselves, to recognize the fact that nothing has been done to redeem the situation,

This I did know. The confidential reports received In Rome far exceed all that the governments have allowed to appear in print.