He then gives a most startling statement of the English Government’s claim, by specifying boundaries which overlap the Schomburgk line and every other line that had been thought of or dreamed of before, declaring that such claim is justified “by virtue of ancient treaties with the aboriginal tribes and of subsequent cessions from Holland.” He sets against this claim, or “on the other hand,” as he says, the fact that the President of Venezuela, in a message dated February 20, 1877, “put forward a claim on the part of Venezuela to the river Essequibo as the boundary to which the Republic was entitled”--thereby giving prejudicial importance to a claim of boundary made by the President of Venezuela three years before, notwithstanding his Lordship was answering a communication in which Venezuela’s present diplomatic representative distinctly proposed “a frontier of accommodation.” His declaration, therefore, that the boundary which was thus put forward by the President of Venezuela would involve “the surrender of a province now inhabited by forty thousand British subjects,” seems quite irrelevant, because such a boundary was not then under consideration; and in passing it may occur to us that the great delay in settling the boundaries between the two countries had given abundant opportunity for such inhabitation as Lord Salisbury suggests. His Lordship having thus built up a contention in which he puts on one side a line which for the sake of pacific accommodation Venezuela no longer proposes to insist upon, and on the other a line for Great Britain so grotesquely extreme as to appear fanciful, soberly observes: The difference, therefore, between these two claims is so great that it is clear that, in order to arrive at a satisfactory arrangement, each party must be prepared to make considerable concessions to the other; and although the claim of Venezuela to the Essequibo River boundary could not under any circumstances be entertained, I beg leave to assure you that Her Majesty’s Government are anxious to meet the Venezuelan Government in a spirit of conciliation, and would be willing, in the event of a renewal of negotiations for a general settlement of boundaries, to waive a portion of what they consider to be their strict right, if Venezuela is really disposed to make corresponding concessions on her part. And ignoring entirely the humbly respectful request of the Venezuelan minister that Great Britain would “vouchsafe to make a proposition of an arrangement,” his Lordship thus concludes his communication: “Her Majesty’s Government will therefore be glad to receive, and will undertake to consider in the most friendly spirit, any proposal that the Venezuelan Government may think fit to make for the establishment of a boundary satisfactory to both nations.”