severed from Colombia, he had no other right against her, if anything were still due to him, on account of the abovementioned invoices, than that which was left to him by the agreement, concerning the partition of the general debt of Colombia, between the three sections which had constituted the said Republic. When a State is divided, the law of nations only requires that its obligations be proportionately distributed among the new States, into which the former has been divided.

For the same reason, the responsibility of Venezuela in this case could never be extended beyond the 28 units of the debt of Colombia assigned to her by virtue of the aforesaid agreement; and I believe that this Commission cannot, in justice, impose upon her a larger one. Nothing done or said to the contrary by her own government or courts, or by the Board of Liquidation of Bogota, can have had for effect, to make her obligation to Idler, either better or worse. In order to change the right of the one, or the obligation of the other, it was necessary, previously, to change the facts which had produced them; and the facts that Idler contracted with Colombia, and that Venezuela only accepted the obligation of paying 28 per cent. of the debt of the former, have not been altered.

Such is my opinion.

This is known as the San Pedro claim, and originated as follows:

The Sun Pedro was a Spanish ship of the line, and having been despatched to Venezuela in 1815, with a military expedition under command of General Morillo, took fire off the coast of Cumana, exploded her magazine, and sunk, with a treasure of a half million Spanish dollars, to the bottom of the sea.

There she laid for twenty odd years, somewhere between the islands of Coche and Cabagua, an almost forgotten wreck, when Colonel Diego Vallenilla, at the instance and in behalf of his son, Antonio José, then in the United States, where he had been educated and married, petitioned the Secretary of War and Marine, General Urdaneta, for the privilege of fishing for the treasure which she had carried, although it is to be observed that the petitioner studiously avoided specific reference to the coin, and simply mentioned pieces of cannon and other effects as the object of the search.

The translation of this petition is very imperfect, but it would appear that the permission sought by Colonel Vallenilla was not only for his son, who was without capital and unable to conduct such an enterprise, but also on account of such persons in the United States as he might be enabled to persuade to unite with him in the undertaking. On the 15th of February, 1839, permission was granted as prayed, upon the simple condition that 5% of whatever was recovered should be paid into the Venezuelan Treasury, under the

supervision of the Collector of Customs at Cumana. And the original resolution granting the privilege appears to have been lodged with the U. S. legation at Caracas as a sort of security for whoever might embark in the enterprise.

Nothing was done until 1844, when, it would seem, a company, called the San Pedro Company, organized in Baltimore, through the efforts of Mr. Grafton L. Dulaney, who held a general power of attorney from Vallenilla, Junior, equipped a vessel with the necessary apparatus, and sent her out to Venezuela for the purpose of exploring for the lost treasure. How much was recovered, what profits were made, or losses suffered, the record furnishes no information; but it does show that the original company for some reason was dissolved and a new one formed under the same general management and power of Dulaney, and that this company also finally ceased operations, and was succeeded in turn by a Boston concern, which appears to have sent out a vessel, the Eliza Ann, in 1850, the history of whose proceedings, as far as the extraction of the treasure is concerned, is involved in the same obscurity as its predecessors. Dulaney, however, was the controller of this enterprise, as he had been of all the previous ones, by virtue of his power of attorney from Vallenilla. This instrument is not among the papers, and we only know of its existence from references made to it in other parts of the record; but it is within the personal knowledge of one of the members of the Commission who knew Mr. Dulaney, that he and Vallenilla had married sisters, and that, being a lawyer of the highest rank and worth in Baltimore, there is a strong probability that such a power had been given. Whether it was coupled with an interest or not is, of course, a matter of speculation on this record.

The Eliza Ann, after her last voyage to Venezuela, returned to the United States some time in the year 1851, and this closes the first chapter of this narrative in which it will be observed that the claimant nowhere appears as having anything to do with the enterprise.

On the 15th of December, 1850, according to the statement of Mr. Driggs, and as appears by a copy of the pap. attested as correct by that gentleman, a contract was entered into between him and Vallenilla, the provisions of which are, to say the least of it, peculiar. In the first place it begins with a recital that the Government of Venezuela has conceded Vallenilla the exclusive right and privilege to take the treasure from the wreck on the sands, which is quite an amplification of a permit which grants the privilege, it is true, but is entirely silent upon the question as to whether it was exclusive or not. If this recital is to be taken as a representation of what the original resolution expresses, it is simply false. If, on the other hand, it is to be accepted as expressing a conclusion of law, we may have something more to say about it further on. The contract then proceeds to state that a power of attorney has been given to Mr. Dulaney as stated, and after showing that the Eliza Ann had been sent out by him, and that she had made two voyages to the wreck, and that Vallenilla had received no money, and that on inquiring of Dulaney for information had been referred to the captain of the schooner, who declined to furnish any, it then became necessary to revoke Dulaney's power, which was accordingly done in his absence and without his knowledge or consent, by Driggs and Vallenilla, by the simple device of a recital in a paper to which they were the only parties.

After disposing of Dulaney in this manner, Driggs, and those who may be associated with him, are substituted in his place "with full, absolute, and irrevocable power for the term of five years; " Driggs & Company to pay all expenses of the enterprise, and to allow Vallenilla at the rate of five hundred dollars per annum as estimated profits, which, in consideration of the value of the franchise, Driggs agreed to advance, and did advance, as he alleges, in a lump sum of twentyfive hundred dollars. Whatever remained after payment of expenses and Government dues was to be equally divided between Driggs and his associates, at least so it appears by

the recitals in this copy of the contract as attested by Mr.

iggs. That gentleman, however, in a letter stating his case and addressed to Mr. Culver, U. S. Minister at Caracas, June 1, 1863, says that he rented the privilege from Vallenilla for five years for $2,500, payable in advance, and adds, "the amount though actually advanced and paid to Vallenilla was to be deducted from his share of the profits as previously received by him from his other associates," from which it would appear that the twenty-five hundred dollars were paid him not in absolute satisfaction of his claim, but contingently on the realization of profits or not. If the scheme was a success Vallenilla was to have his share of the profits, twenty per cent., and would allow the $2,500 as so much paid on account, if the accounting took place at the end of the five years, or if at the end of each year, as more probably would have been the case, would allow $500. According to this statement of his rights under the contract, he was entitled to receive a partner's share, without being liable for losses or expenses, subject only to what had been paid him by way of advance. According to the contract, or what purports to be such at least, he had no right or interest in the enterprise for a period of five years, and for that period surrendered its control to another under a power of attorney expressly made irrevocable.

In this same letter to Culver, Driggs fixes the date when the Eliza Ann suspended work, and says that it was on the 2d of March, 1851, from which it would appear that he and Vallenilla had revoked the power of attorney to Dulaney, while the last enterprise which he had organized was still a going concern, and nearly three months before the vessel employed by it suspended operations and returned home. Not only so, but he says that work was suspended, not abandoned, and he has a reason for using the one word and not the other, because he is answering a charge of Gellineau, the Secretary of the Treasury, who had revoked the permit, not merely because it was personal and not transferable, but be