I hope your Excellency will permit me to suggest, as a mutual friend of both parties, the suspension or withdrawal of your note of the 7th instant, so that negotiations may at once be opened for the immediate and final settlement of the afore-mentioned claims without further resort to unpleasant measures. From representations made to me, I am satisfied that if the note of the 7th instant is withdrawn temporarily even, Venezuela will do in the premises that which will prove satisfactory to your Government. A few days after this note was sent, a reply was received in which the governor of Trinidad courteously expressed his thanks to our minister for his good offices, and informed him that, as the Government of Venezuela regarded his note of October 7 “as offensive, and appeared desirous of at last settling this long-pending question in a friendly spirit,” he promptly telegraphed to her Majesty’s Government asking permission to withdraw that note and substitute a less forcible one for it; and that he had just been informed by his home government in reply that this arrangement could not be sanctioned. Our minister reported this transaction to his home government at Washington on the fourth day of November, 1887, and stated that the money demanded by Great Britain had been paid by Venezuela under protest. Venezuela may have been altogether at fault in the transaction out of which this demand arose; the amount which England exacted may not have been unreasonable; and the method of its assessment, though not the most considerate possible, has support in precedent; and even the threat of a naval force may sometimes be justified in enforcing unheeded demands. I have not adverted to this incident for the purpose of inviting judgment on any of its phases, but only to call attention to the fact that it was allowed to culminate with seemingly studied accompaniments of ruthlessness and irritation, at a time when a boundary question was pending between the two nations, when the weaker contestant was importuning the stronger for arbitration, and when a desire for reconciliation and peace in presence of strained relations should have counseled considerateness and magnanimity--all this in haughty disregard of the solicitous and expressed desire of the Government of the United States to induce a peaceful adjustment of the boundary dispute, and in curt denial of our request that this especially disturbing incident should be relieved of its most exasperating features. In the trial of causes before our courts, evidence is frequently introduced to show the animus or intent of litigating parties. Perhaps strict decorum hardly permits us to adopt the following language, used by the Venezuelan minister when reporting to our Secretary of State the anticipated arrival of a British war-steamer to enforce the demand of Great Britain: