These claims were consolidated at the argument, and having been finally submitted after a long delay, for which the claimants are not responsible, will now be considered and determined.

In the latter part of April, 1812, say about the 26th, there arrived out from Baltimore, at La Guayra, two schooners, the Eleanor and the Speedwell, the former belonging to John Donnell & Sons, and the latter to Hollins & McBlair, both of them shipping merchants, residing in Baltimore, and all of them citizens of the United States. These schooners were laden with flour, the Speedwell carrying 539 barrels and the Eleanor 480 barrels. Of the cargo of the Eleanor 40 barrels were for the account of the captain, and the remaining 440 for her owners. Of the cargo of the Speedwell, part was for account of Hollins & McBlair and part for William Hollins, also residing in Baltimore, and a citizen of the United States. The respective proportions owned by each is a matter of no moment in the present inquiry. Of the whole lot of 539 barrels, 19 were rejected as not up to sample, according to the contract, presently to be noticed, leaving 520 barrels which were accepted. These, added to the 480 barrels shipped by the Eleanor, and belonging, as before stated, in the proportions of 440 to John Donnell & Sons and 40 to the

captain of the schooner, made up a lot of 1,000 barrels, which was disposed of by the following contract:

(Translation.)

"We, the undersigned, citizen Pedro Eduardo, on the one side, and citizen Gerardo Patrullo, of La Guayra, consignee of the American schooners Eleanor and Speedwell, on the other side, have covenanted and agreed as follows:

"1st. I, citizen Pedro Eduardo, do hereby purchase from Patrullo, the consignee of the above-named schooners, one thousand barrels of Baltimore flour, equal in quality to contents of the barrel which has been chosen to serve as a sample; and I shall give in payment for the same two quintals of green coffee of first quality for each barrel, as follows:

"2d. The flour shall be delivered to me either on land or on board, as I may decide; and the import duties and the unloading expenses shall be at the seller's charge. I shall deliver the coffee on board in canvas bags (sacos de lienzo), duties and expenses thereon being at my charge, half within thirty days and half within forty.

"3d. I, citizen Gerardo Patrullo, in the name of the respective American masters, assent to the sale of the one thousand barrels of flour, and to the delivery thereof on land as set forth, and also to receive on board the 2,000 quintals of green coffee of first quality, and no other coffee, in canvas bags, as stated in the foregoing articles. And we both agree to comply with, and to fulfil in every respect, this agreement, entered into in good faith, and executed in duplicate at La Guayra on the 23d of May, 1812."

"Commissioned by the Government for the purchase of flour."

It will be observed that this is not an ordinary contract of sale in which the price of the thing bought is expressed in dollars and cents, or other denomination of money, but it is a contract by which one product is to be exchanged for another; that is, two quintals of coffee for every barrel of flour. The price at which the coffee is to be rated per pound or per the quintal or one hundred pounds is not fixed in the contract, but the flour is to be delivered duty paid, and the coffee is to be put free on board within the time prescribed; this was thirty days from date of contract for one-half of the coffee, and the balance in forty days. According to the plain terms of this contract, Venezuela bound herself by

her commissioner to deliver in exchange for this flour two thousand quintals of coffee. The flour, which was then on board ship, was delivered, and 500 barrels were shipped to Puerto Cabello, on the 29th of May, June 8th and 9th following, and an order was given for the transfer of the remaining 500 barrels, on the 5th of June, to the provision store-house in Caracas. It appears that only 70,940 pounds, or 709.40 quintals of coffee, were delivered in exchange by Venezuela, leaving 129,060, or 1,290 quintals and 60 pounds, still due. This appears by a protest made by Patrullo on the 28th of July, 1812, in which he also apportions, for some reason of his own, the amount of coffee which should go to the masters of the schooners, upon a principle of division which cannot be reconciled with the respective rights of the parties. For one would naturally suppose that the schooner Speedwell, which carried the 520 lot, would, on any just principle of apportionment, receive as much more as this number was in excess of the 480 lot carried by the Eleanor. But Patrullo reverses this method, and out of the whole lot of 70,940 pounds received, allows 43,114 pounds to the Eleanor and only 27,286 pounds to the Speedwell. He protests, however, on the date mentioned, for the balance of the coffee undelivered, and also for $20 a day for demurrage PAID to each of the vessels, and paid, as we understand the protest, by him. With the exception of some correspondence between his principals in Baltimore and himself, after his return to the United States, this protest of Patrullo, on the 28th of July, 1812, is the last we hear of this claim until the 4th of April, 1835, when the matter is brought to the attention of Mr. Forsyth, then Secretary of State, in a letter written by Mr. William Hollins. In the interval, however, it appears that Patrullo had returned to the United States, and in a letter from Philadelphia addressed to Messrs. William Hollins and Hollins & McBlair, on 25th June, 1814, had informed these gentlemen, as well as John Donnell & Sons, that the balance of their claim for this flour had been satisfied, nominally,

by a deposit of Venezuelan paper money, of little or no value, under an order issued by the Spanish Government, which had gained the ascendancy in Venezuela a few days after he had made his protest. This deposit, he says, made on account of Messrs. Hollins & McBlair and William Hollins, amounted to $7,041.75, and on account of John Donnell & Sons to $6,346.04. In reply to an inquiry from them whether this might not be considered payment, he answers in the negative, for the reason that coffee was to be given in exchange, and therefore the claim would be good for the flour, notwithstanding the deposit of paper money which, as he says, was to be received back by Venezuela.

Whether they were satisfied at the time with this statement of their agent or not, or how far they differed from him as to the legal effect of this deposit, we have no means of ascertaining, but we do know, as far as the record discloses, that no effort was made to press the claim upon Venezuela until it was brought to the attention of the Secretary of State in 1835. It is true that during this interval the affairs of Venezuela were in the most disturbed condition; that from the latter part of July, 1812, with the exception of a year, down to 1820, the loyalists, as the Spaniards were called, had possession of her capital, and administered the government, and that from 1819 to 1829, during her connection with the Colombian confederacy, there would have been great difficulties in the way of presenting the claim. At the same time, by information gained from the papers in another case pending before this tribunal, we know that the task would not have been impossible, for we find that Mr. Jacob Idler, of Philadelphia, from the year 1823 down to the year 1833, carried on a protracted liquidation and litigation in all the courts of Venezuela, from the highest to the lowest, in an effort to establish a claim for muskets supplied to the patriots, and finally succeeded in obtaining a judgment in his favor. It not only appears that the claimants did nothing to bring these claims to the attention of the Venezuelan

government during the interval mentioned, but the papers show that William Hollins, on the 2d of December, 1824, by letter addressed to Mr. Adams, then Secretary of State, solicited the aid of the United States in recovering money due from Venezuela on another distinct and separate claim for muskets. To reconcile the apparent improbability of the coexistence with the musket claim of another claim for flour arising about the same time and between the same parties, which was omitted or overlooked by the claimant in his appeal for the aid of his government, an explanation was offered, plausible enough, but not sustained by the facts as we find them disclosed by the papers. This explanation was that William Hollins had a separate claim against Venezuela for muskets, and was jointly interested in the flour claim with Hollins & McBlair, and the letter to Mr. Adams was intended to solicit the intervention of the United States in behalf of the claim which he individually represented, and might naturally omit, therefore, any allusion to the joint claim without subjecting the omission to any injurious inferences such as have been suggested.

But it is a concession in the case that William Hollins was interested in the flour claim; indeed, according to his statement, was the only person interested in the claim; and admitting, now, for the purposes of the argument, that Hollins & McBlair had no interest in the musket claim, yet, still, how can we account for his silence as to the flour claim, upon the assumption of its being an existing bona fide claim, and that he was, at the date of his letter to Mr. Adams, fully apprised as to all the circumstances affecting the history and character of the claim. Upon this assumption, it is inexplicable why he did not unite both claims in his request for intervention. Moreover, in the letter from Patrullo from Philadelphia, before referred to, it appears that a statement of account was enclosed, showing what was due William Hollins, and Hollins & McBlair on both flour and musket account, and this statement is endorsed in the handwriting of William Hollins, as follows: