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Venezuela (GULF OF See MARACAIBO GULF)

GULF OF. See MARACAIBO, GULF OF.

VENEZUELAN BOUNDARY DIS- PUTE. In 1855 a crisis arose between Great Britain and Venezuela regarding VENEZUELAN DISPUTE the boundary line separating the latter country from British Guiana -a question which had been long in dispute.

The controversy dated back to 1814, when Great Britain acquired by treaty with the Netherlands the province of Demerara, Essequibo, and Bernice. Venezuela originally claimed her limits to be those of the captaincy-general of 1810, but contented herself with claiming the line of the Essequibo river as the true boundary. Great Britain apparently acquiesced till 1840, when she commissioned Sir R. Schomburgk to lay out the boundaries, which he proceeded to do by including a large area which had before been considered by Venezuela a portion of her domain, and to the possession of which by Great Britain a vigorous protest was entered. After much diplomatic negotiations the monuments set up by Schomburgk were removed by the order of Lord Aberdeen. Other boundaries were from time to time suggested, but none agreed on, till finally, in 1886, Great Britain returned to her contention of 1840, and claimed all the territory within the S Schomburgk line. The controversy continued till 1894, when a Venezuelan force entered the disputed territory and raised the flag of the latter country at Yuruan. The following year the British police removed the flag, for which they were arrested but finally released, Great Britain setting up a demand for reparation somewhat in the nature of an ultimatum.

The United States became a party to the dispute by the act of Congress directing the President to urge Great Britain to submit to arbitration the question whether Venezuela was entitled to the territory between the Essequibo and the Orinoco. In his annual message, to Congress, Dec. 3, 1895, President Cleveland called attention to the boundary controversy and the representations made by the United States Government to that of Great Britain with a view of securing the submission of the dispute to arbitration. On the 17th he sent a special message to Congress, accompanied by the answer of the British Government to the representations mentioned, and a recommendation that Congress authorize the appointment of a commission to determine the divisional line between Venezuela and British Guiana. The message created intense excitement throughout Europe and America. Both Houses of Congress passed a commission bill unanimously and indulged in much talk of war.

Under the bill the President announced, Jan. 1, 1896, the appointment of the following commissioners: David J. Brewer , Associate-Justice of the United States Supreme Court; Richard H. Alvey, VENIAL SIN Chief-Justice of the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia; Andrew D.

White, ex-United States minister to Russia; Frederic R. Coudert; and Daniel C. Gilman, president of Johns Hopkins Uni versity. Subsequently the commission organized and chose Justice Brewer its president.

The commission invited the governments of Venezuela and Great Britain to formulate and present to it their respective cases in support of their claims.

The invitation was complied with by both governments. Independently of these cases the commission gathered a great mass of evidence bearing on the claims, and continued its sittings till Feb. 27, 1897, when, Venezuela and Great Britain having signed a treaty providing for the submission of the claims to arbithe claims to arbi tration, the commission considered its work at an end, made its report to the President, and terminated its existence .

The treaty between Venezuela and Great Britain was signed in Washington, D.

C. , on Feb. 2, 1897, and provided for the appointment of an arbitration tribunal, to determine the boundary line, consisting of five jurists, the two on the part of Venezuela being Chief-Justice Fuller and Associate-Justice Brewer of the United States Supreme Court; the two on the part of Great Britain being the Rt. Hon.

Baron Herschell and the Hon. Sir Richard Henn Collins; and the fifth to be selected by the four jurists nominated in the treaty, or, in the event of their failure to agree, by the King of Norway and Sweden, the fifth jurist to be the president of the tribunal. The treaty provided that the tribunal should sit in Paris, France. The tribunal was completed by the selection of Professor Maertens, a distinguished Russian jurist, Professor of International Law in the University of St. Petersburg, and legal writer, as the fifth member and president. The award of the tribunal, which was delivered Oct. 3, 1899, gave Great Britain the Schomburgk line, with the exception of Barima Point, at the mouth of the Orinoco, and a strip of territory between the Wenamu and Cuyuni rivers; but it was decided that the mouth of the Orinoco should be open to the British, and both banks of a part of the Cuyuni, where the Schomburgk line had given them only one bank.

VENIAL SIN. The distinction made in Roman Catholic theology between mortal sin and a venial sin was first made in connection with Church discipline. St.

Augustine, in his book of "Faith and Works," distinguishes sins into two kinds; greater, or those which obliged men to do public penance, and which he VENICE called mortal; and lesser, such as sins of the tongue and thoughts, and the immoderate use of lawful things, which he called venial, not because they were not mortal in their own nature, but because in comparison with the others they were of an inferior nature, and not so easily proved on men; and because men were cleared from them without the humiliation of a public penance, by private repentance, and daily prayer and reformation. The same distinction is made in the writings of many of the early Fathers. The sins for which public penance had to be undergone were all enormous sins, such as idolatry, apostasy, divination, murder, adultery, theft, and sacrilege. But this is not the distinction which is made in later theology in connection with the doctrines of purgatory and auricular confession, and especially in the writings of the casuists.

There is so much diversity of opinion among the writers themselves that no precise definition of a venial sin can be given, further than that they are those minor sins to which even the best are liable, and from which even those who escape the punishment of hell have to be purified in purgatory before they can enter to heaven.