On Friday Lord Salisbury rose in his place in the
House of Lords and drew attention to the Venezuelan papers. The negotiations were not complete, but they were advancing favourably and "with entire friendliness on the part of both Governments." The Venezuelan portion of the negotiations bad, however, come to no conclusion. Venezuela claimed two- thirds of our colony, much of it long-settled. That claim could not be submitted to arbitration. The great thing, how- ever, was to get at the facts. When that was done an agreement, he thought, would not be difficult. Meantime we have not ourselves ascertained the whole of the facts, though another Blue-book of documents would shortly be presented. Lord Salisbury then discussed the general treaty of arbitra- tion. One difficulty was the slowness of arbitrating. Colonies under arbitration were like estates thrown into Chancery. We are at this moment interested in an African arbitration which has gone on for seven or eight years. Mr. Olney had said that such difficulties could not arise between us and the Union ; but if America is to protect all the South American Republics—not necessarily an unreasonable position, for we do something of a similar kind ourselves to some extent in the case of small States like Sweden, Holland, and Portugal—a great many difficult problems might arise. Hence the Government were obliged to move very cautiously. Again, they wanted to know the trend of public opinion. In a word, Lord Salisbury asked for "a lead" from the country, —not at all an unreasonable request, though one which has a little puzzled the public, which prefers to leave such things to the experts, and then grumble at their stupidity.
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