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 ^*iUiinmr«Mlf .''°*^"'"®"** °' General Castro 
 
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TWO 
 
 NOTABLE PUBLIC 
 
 OF 
 
 GENERAL CASTRO 
 
 PRESIDENT OF VENEZUELA 
 
 NEW YORK 
 1904 
 
 V 
 
A . ^o<poh[ 
 

 ^im prtBtntin^ tn gnu tljf tranalatinit of tittn nf tljs 
 moiSt notafal* pitbltr anrumenta, proiurrt bg our 
 jiatrtnt PrwiliMtt, 31 bfij txi atltnomlrJigt tlje ititjgritji 
 aitft IjouMfji nf ijnur tif&taftn, inli*H in tljf attack nf 
 " tlftte ^nuwra " againat 'BtntKuela, bii jtnn tn atalt^ 
 ba tl)* ailij nf tlj* nglytsnuanwa, anti lunn fnr tiff 
 rauBf nf " 3«Bltr?." tljs mnat rnutable laurel in gnur 
 ftiplnmatiral rnvtec. 
 
 pijaae arrrpt mg uiarm aJintirattnn an& ainrerf 
 tsUtttt. 
 
 SMpfilfuUg. 
 
 Pedro Rafael Rincones, 
 
 (ilonanl ffi^nrral of 1l*n*gurla. 
 
GENERAL CIPRIANO CASTRO, 
 Constitutional President ot Venezuela. 
 
" SJft Its Ijalif faitl) tljat rigljt makca mlgljt ; 
 anil in lljat faitli Irt ua ^ar^• to Jio our a»tij-" 
 
 LINCOLN. 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 OF 
 
 GENERAL CIPRIANO CASTRO 
 
 CONSTlTUTIONAIv PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC 
 TO THE VENEZUELANS 
 
 ON JUI,Y FIFTH, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THREE 
 
 LET US Stop and wonder while delivering this patriotic oration on 
 < the anniversary of this memorable and solemn day, the birth- 
 day of our Venezuelan home, independent and free. 
 
 Seen from this distance of time, at a period when austere and 
 forceful civil virtue is so rarely met with, the men who inaugurated 
 and direcfted the revolutionary movement of 1811 appear indeed of 
 more than ordinary estate. 
 
 In contemplating and studying them and their work after this 
 lapse of years, they appear to grow and increase in size and assume 
 clearer outlines, not unlike the projecftions of the mountains at twi- 
 light and as the light of the new day that rises above the line of the 
 horizon. 
 
 They all were endowed with the qualities called for by the 
 exigencies of their times. 
 
 The ideas of liberty that at this period impregnated the minds 
 of the people, like the generating pollen on wings of revolutions to 
 frudlify this globe, germinated in the souls of these men like the 
 seed sown in deep and wide furrows. Creative and resourceful men, 
 who, notwithstanding the adverse surroundings and the reigning 
 prejudices, gallantly entered the arena to battle for freedom, and at 
 once astonished the world by their Olympic audacity. 
 
 Like God to the ocean, they dared to say to the ever proud, 
 overbearing and incroaching tide of medieval invasion : " Here 
 shall be stayed their proud billows." And stayed they were, be- 
 cause these men built the levees against which the tendencies of 
 historical absolutism vainly dashed their forces. They formed 
 among the people alliances based upon liberty, and in order to make 
 
them strong against all contingencies they cemented them with im- 
 mense sacrifices in blood and treasure, coupled with the highest efforts 
 of body and mind. 
 
 Oh, yes, that work of founding a nation must have been, in most 
 respedls, strong and enduring, when in spite of attack from within 
 and without for three quarters of a century, it subsists at this day, 
 although weak and feverish from excessive loss of blood, still always 
 strong in spirit, with noble instincts, generous sentiments, and en- 
 tirely in accord with its history and destiny. 
 
 We have erred so much, so much, that at times the refledtive 
 mind is almost persuaded to believe that we might be a people fatally 
 condemned to the most painful experiences and trials on the road to 
 civilization, for even in the very school of our own misfortunes, we 
 learn so very, very slowly the ways of practical and normal living — 
 that is to say, the ideas of orderly, peaceful development under the 
 auspices of liberty. 
 
 Our society, delivered from the foreign yoke, but irredeemed 
 from its own vices, falls and rises by turns, as if it obstinately re- 
 fused to change in the least its own characfter and habits, and could 
 not listen to good counsels and sound advice, unless it were clothed 
 in the glare of conflagrations or in the distant rumblings of threatened 
 catastrophes. But, perhaps, may not the deep impressions created 
 by the recent happenings be suflScient to correct these, the most 
 potent causes of the convulsive instability of its institutions and its 
 governments? Will it at last learn the objedl lesson, so full of un- 
 foreseen disaster, the fruits of j|ickle quackery, supported by the 
 most unbridled passions ? May it please God, that so it be ! 
 
 This is the day, above all others, on which to make solemn 
 vows to the sacred memory of the noble founders of our Nationality. 
 I,et us make at least one, but let it be fervent, sincere and irrevocable. 
 
 Let us all promise without partisanship, without mental reser- 
 vation of any kind of intolerance and hatred, to live from this day, 
 possessed with the constantly growing purpose before us, to mend 
 our ways, or what amounts to the same thing, never again to dis- 
 embowel our country with^ords and bayonets, but rather to protedl 
 it with our bodies, defend it with our arms, and to make it great 
 and happy by our efforts in the field of labor, which latter is the 
 highest form of patriotism. Now to-day is the time, to-morrow it 
 may be too late ! 
 
 To again expose ourselves to a crisis such as we have just 
 passed through, would be almost equal to abandon our glorious 
 
banner and that grand patrimony bequeathed to us by Miranda the 
 Martyr, Bolivar the Great, and their noble co-workers in the 
 struggle for our redemption. 
 
 I,et us proclaim from every rostrum, and continue to send to our 
 people in the furthermost ends of the Republic, words of cheer and 
 encouragement, that they may arise from the terrible trials and 
 sufferings to which they have so long been subjedled. 
 
 L,et us resolve once and a thousand times before the sacred altar 
 of our common country, that we will abandon for once and all the 
 path of error, not as conquered, but as convinced, in order to pursue, 
 without flinphing, the road that is pointed out to us by honor and 
 duty, and let us, at last, bury forever those passions that lead to and 
 end only in anarchy. 
 
 Thus shall we become strong and respecfted and be enabled to 
 give force to the outcome of that peace, which to attain has cost us 
 so much, and thus being freed from internal obstacles and danger, we 
 shall be able tp diredt all our efforts to the end of making of this 
 country the respedled and loved home of a worthy, industrious and 
 intelligent people, that for its sturdy virtues will recommend itself 
 to the admiration of the world, and whose moral worth' will make up 
 for the deficiencies of its material resources. Venezuela is in 
 evidence before itself and before the world. It is observed and 
 watched in these days of expansion and conquests. The fertility of 
 our soil, the abundance of our natural resources, form incentives for 
 the avaricious tendencies of other nations. 
 
 Venezuelans : — The truth must be told, though it may hurt 
 and pain, or rather in order that it causes intense pain, like strong 
 caustic, and thereby brings forth healthful results. 
 
 Venezuelans are unfortunately those whom we must charge as 
 being the authors of all our misfortunes, and Venezuelans must be 
 those who shall raise above all the symbol of our national salvation, 
 from our errors and misdeeds. 
 
 Under the palladium of this solemn pilgrimage, I, with all her 
 sons, will go to our beloved country, knowing that it, like a loving 
 mother, will forgive even those of her children who have not known 
 how to love and defend her in the days of tribulation. To-day it is 
 just one year since I, with expressions of the most intense patri- 
 otism, declared myself as being in the field to stamp out anarchism 
 and to restore constitutional order, and here I am, returned and 
 bringing you that which then I could but promise. There can still 
 be heard the echo of the words with which a year ago I greeted the 
 
 7 
 
dawn of this glorious day, and announced to the country that the 
 requirements of solemn duty and political necessity had again forced 
 the sword into my hands, and had called me with irresistible force 
 to the field of battle, demanding a striking demonstration of the fadl 
 that the right is powerful and always will prevail, when it has for 
 standard bearers, men in whom honor is combined with force of 
 character and is backed by strong convi(ftions. 
 
 And what I then promised is now fulfilled and completed with 
 evident exadlness. 
 
 Thus it was that, in a short campaign, success was chained to our 
 chariot of vicftory in the very hotbed of rebellion, and thus I was 
 enabled, through the heroism of my men and the constanc)^ of for- 
 tune, to draw from the very heat of battle the peace necessary for 
 our national existence, the guarantees for our citizenship, to give 
 stability to progress, prestige to our institutions, and thus purified 
 in the crucible of sacrifice and suffering, bring forth those elements 
 that are needed for the political and social restoration of Venezuela. 
 
 The impetuous avalanche of human beings and of events was, 
 in hundred days of battling, reduced to an informal mass, stricken 
 with fear and scattered in all directions. The grave foreign com- 
 plications that overtook us at the time of our internal conflidt could 
 not have been foreseen on the day when we marched to battle, but 
 the general results, properly viewed and appreciated; have really ex- 
 ceeded the promises then made, notwithstanding that they were then 
 looked upon as the blatant vaporings of a beaten blusterer, who had 
 bent his footsteps toward inevitable disaster. 
 
 These prodigious achievements have not made me vainglorious, 
 nor has the height to which I have been raised by the heroic deeds 
 of the constitutional army in the internal conflicfl, and the prudence 
 and patriotism of our' people in the foreign contest, caused any 
 dizziness to my head. I aspire rather to base my pride upon the 
 good use we may make of these vidtories, in the work of wise ad- 
 ministration, and of the progress in the unification and elevation of 
 our people, and in the battles that we shall have to fight in the field of 
 labor, of civilizations, of the sciences and of the arts. We have for 
 these undertakings the stimulant and first necessity of life, which is 
 that Peace, that will be very shortly officially declared. This peace 
 is not merely the trace following a cruel, bloody struggle, but the 
 definite and logical outcome of a long war ; the end of which will 
 also, grant God, terminate our public calamities and open wide to us 
 the horizon of our national aspirations. This peace is the conscien- 
 
tious desire of all, and, therefore, it should be lasting and fruitful, 
 permitting us to realize unflinchingly the programme of the cause 
 of I,iberal restoration. 
 
 Fellow Patriots : — lyet us, on this glorious day, remember with 
 gratitude those who, although not of our kindred, have addressed to 
 us during our dreadful afflidlions, words of cheer, and given us 
 tokens of affedlion and sympathy, and let us swear by the blood so 
 freely shed to seal the Independence of Colombia on that memorable 
 field, which, as a wonder of the national art, serves us at the same 
 time as canopy and horizon during this .adl.* 
 
 Let us swear to prove ourselves worthy of that glorious sacrifice 
 by constantly pradticing those virtues which it served to improve. 
 
 (Signed) Cipriano Castro. 
 Caracas, Jiily 5th, 1903. 
 
 *He refers to very good pictures of the war of independence that are on the inner 
 ceiling of the Capitol, representing the great battles of Carabobo, Boyacd, Junin and Ayacucho, 
 that were the ends of war with Spain, sealing the independence of the Great Colombia, which 
 comprised Venezuela, Nueva Granada and Ecuador. Also of Perd and Bolivia. 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 ov 
 
 GENERAL CIPRIANO CASTRO 
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC 
 TO THE VENEZUELANS 
 
 ON JANUARY FIRST, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FOUR 
 
 FELLOW Citizens : — My vows of to-day for your happiness are 
 so fervent that I may hardly succeed in formulating them : 
 My heart is full in this moment only with them, and thej'' could 
 scarcely be translated but in a salutation or prayer to the Deity, who 
 protec5ts the great peoples — the peoples that regenerate and save 
 themselves by sacrifices and self-denial. 
 
 Receive and accept these vows as an homage to your nobility, 
 as an innermost offering to the majesty of the Republic, as a testi- 
 mony of profound gratitude for the immense amount of honors I 
 owe to your confidence. 
 
 Fellow Citizens : — The year that begins to-day will be one of 
 the most fruitful and transcendental in the civil history of Venezue- 
 lans — it will be as the first triumphal arch of our organized and 
 flourishing democracy. 
 
 From the night of grief and trial that has just passed away, the 
 national soul comes forth, radiant and fuir of experience as an in- 
 effable Eucharist of patriotism. Those dreadful and protra(5led 
 hours, fatally necessary, perhaps to the chief design of our civiliza- 
 tion, will remain marked out with red rings in our republican 
 calendar as a warning in all times to the governments and the 
 parties that there is nothing so disgraceful and so ravenous as the 
 headlong fratricidal rancour, and that in the struggles supported by 
 this rancour, the people gamble or endanger not only their well- 
 being and credit, but even their existence, which for us was the price 
 of great efforts' and sublime immolations. 
 
 1 1 
 
Something untangible, but noble and wise, as the Deity that in- 
 flamed the soul of Bolivar, whisp'ers in my ear that we have doubled, 
 perhaps forever, the hateful cape of the domestic tempests. And in 
 fact, it seems impossible, rationally impossible, that a nation, illus- 
 trious for its element of blood, renowned for its heroism, great for 
 its virtues and envied for its riches, may relapse still in its turbulent 
 madness of three quarters of a century — madness of tumultuous 
 crowds and mutiny, that in Athens and Rome, as here and every- 
 where, has never given but fruits of catastrophe — dreadful germina- 
 tion of the greatest misfortunes. 
 
 The visible signs of the present situation, valued from a serene 
 and ample point of view, agree together in proving that the country, 
 reacting upon itself with wise and prudent concurrence of opinion, 
 adopts lastly the means of securing a positive liberty, derived from 
 order and tolerance and the desired well-being, by virtue of the 
 fecundation of peace by labor. 
 
 It is evident to me, considering the present state of the public 
 opinion, that the peace conquered in four years of bloody fight is 
 not now a truce that the interests in conflicft give to each other, but 
 a compadl of everlasting alliance between all the great fadlors of the 
 national democracy, to liquidate at once before History the mourn- 
 ful accounts of common blunders and mistakes, and to open others 
 with the future, in a great book of gradual and intelligent civiliza- 
 tion, able to be pradlically adapted to the native ways and the high 
 ends of social economy. 
 
 The fa(?tions have not already acftion of their own, not even 
 peculiar physiognomy. Some subdued, others convinced, all of them 
 are incorporated almost completely with the great restorer Nucleus, 
 to constitute the formidable unit that henceforth will answer before 
 natives and foreigners of the fate of the Republic. That nucleus is 
 the nebulous of a superb condensation of liberal and democratic 
 Venezuela. 
 
 Yes, fellow citizens ! we are in full exercise of our refledtive 
 faculties. We try strenuously to give unity to the public spirit, so 
 that the common patriotic efforts may have the greatest efTe<5tiveness, 
 and this is a conclusive proof of pra(ftical wisdom, because unity is 
 the first scientific basis of all associations. We renounce to the old 
 fa(5lious conventions to belong to the new vigorous communion 
 which, from the borders of the Tachira to that of the Orinoco, has 
 irrigated in immense furrow the beneficent seed of the restorer 
 ideal ; and this is a testimony of profound good sense, because men 
 
and parties and even the same ideas, are by an evident historical 
 law more or less accidental elements of a given time, and fall will- 
 ingly or by force, under the vital principle of incessant transforma- 
 tion that rules in all the spheres of the universe. 
 
 Immediate product of this laudable concurrence of the country 
 with its primordiate needs, is the great plebiscite of corporations and 
 citizens that has proclaimed from one end to the other of the 
 national territory, the urgent convenience of the constitutional re- 
 forms, to corredl certain grave anomalies occasioned by the war, and 
 to adjust the fundamental basis of the Union and the organic prin- 
 ciples of the public powers, according to what the same institutions 
 have demonstrated in their application. 
 
 The inopportune political idealism of our ruling classes has 
 caused the loss in barren trials of a precious time, that we will only 
 make up bringing to the body of the native institutions elements, of 
 comprobated analogy with our charadler, and organic rules that may 
 fill up with energetic wisdom our lack of sufficient preparation for 
 the free development of the Republic. 
 
 I have been present in the impetuous overflow of the reformist 
 currents as anxious spectator, because the duties of the Magistracy 
 prevent my adlivity in this field, and I would like to have been able 
 to support it freely with all my vigor. lyCt this confession be par- 
 doned to me, as pledge of genial republican frankness, confession 
 that wrests from me the vehement desire of seeing consecrated in 
 everlasting Codes and laws the principles that nourished my soul in 
 the exile, that furnished me with arms on the 23rd day of May, 1899, 
 and that afterwards have always been my guide and even my shield 
 in all the peripetias of the Revolutio?i Liberal Restauradora, with an 
 efiiciency visible to all, because this Revolution has conquered all its 
 adversaries, because under its flag our country has been saved of 
 black conspirators, and because in its provident bosom there is only 
 love for the Venezuelan family. 
 
 Let it be also well understood that my agreement with the re- 
 formist idea is above all those foul dealings which in similar cases 
 have put in danger the internal security of the State. 
 
 There is not a single motive to suppose that I am capable of 
 extravagant ambitions, or that I belong to that class of individuals 
 who affecfl to surrender to certain insinuations of perfidious con- 
 ventionalism. Even if I had not come in the high position I occupy 
 by the uprightness of my behavior and the strength of my arms, I 
 would never turn my mind to suggestions unfriendly to liberty. 
 
 13 
 
It is enough the power that the people have given to me, and 
 my character of leader of the most beautiful and certainly the most 
 beneficent revolution that the modern annals of Venezuelan record. 
 With this characfter and this power, I have tried and will go on try- 
 ing to obtain for my country the greatest amount, of benefit, and 
 when the hour to surrender then comes, there will be no man and 
 no party who will be able to say that I served them or they served 
 me as an instrument for something unworthy of the honor of the 
 Republic. 
 
 Venezuelans : — After some days j'ou will be in possession of 
 the propitious, constitutional and judicial elements that you ask with 
 such high reasons as a sovereign and progressive entity. Then and 
 until considerable time after, it is probable that we will have no 
 questions nor political problems that will embarrass or preoccupy 
 us ; above all, because when the Association works with guarantees 
 and the Government administrators with honesty and intelligence, 
 there cannot be between the one and the other but sympathetic cur- 
 rents, and this, in my opinion, constitutes a state of things able to 
 satisfy the most pressing aspirations of liberty and expansion — of 
 ample liberation, in short. 
 
 Besides, the Liberal Restoration, definitely organized and con- 
 stituted, will be as a great church, always open to the communion of 
 the modern national spirit by the imminence of the democratic prin- 
 ciples in the brilliant eternit}- of the beloved country. The creed of 
 the citizens in that church will be a permanent protest against the 
 fadtious pugilism and the readlionary madness, and there will be no 
 Venezuelan that will not swear with noble faith in the altars, eternal 
 love to fraternity and to union. 
 
 In this way, free of incandescent passionate political controv- 
 ersies, affirmed the peace in the public conscience, maintained order 
 as a precious necessity to the individual and collective interests, the 
 most fruitful initiative in the sphere of the administration and in the 
 field of business will necessarily come, until our economic level will 
 be raised, and we will have sufficient representation in the markets 
 of the world. This is the desideratum of the country in this solemn 
 epoch, undoubtedly because, besides the elemental current reasons 
 that make good its criterion in this particular, its recent historj' 
 teaches that if some of our good liberal governments would not have 
 withdrawn from the adlivity of the administration and the improve- 
 ment of jiublic works to rush into imprudent political adventures, 
 we would have to-day nothing to env3- to the most advanced peoples 
 of the Continent. 
 
 14 
 
We are rich and laborious ; two oceans offer us extensive routes 
 to bring and to carry all that we produce and need, and the idle 
 capital in other zones wishes anxiously to come and thrive in our 
 soil. We only want to be sufficiently discreet and judicious to secure 
 confidence — mother of credit — and to exploit our riches with 
 practical and methodical criterion. 
 
 If to obtain this you need still some new sacrifice, you can dis- 
 pose of me and of what I am worth. No greater glory to a man than 
 to have contributed to his country's civilization with all that he 
 received from her and from God, who helps and protedls her. 
 
 Fellow Citizens : — In the name of the Liberal Restoration and 
 of my loyal forebodings, I augur you that this year will be the first 
 of a series of peaceful lustrums, during which the Republic will raise 
 to great culture and progress. 
 
 Caracas, January i, 1904. 
 
 i.S 
 
MESSAGE 
 
 OF 
 
 GENERAL CIPRIANO CASTRO 
 
 PRESIDENT OF VENEZUELA 
 
 TO 
 
 National Congress 
 
 1904 
 
Co the 
 
 Hssoctated press: 
 
 IT behooves your powerful organization to spread 
 broadcast the news of the rise and fall of the 
 people of the earth. 
 
 During the last few years of political interest, 
 Venezuela has seen its soil soaked in blood, its 
 riches wasted and its independence threatened, 
 while its Chief Executive, who has steered the Ship 
 of State clear of the reefs and hidden rocks of in- 
 ternal revolutions and the dangers of foreign com- 
 plications, has been in more than one instance a 
 victim of the attacks of his enemies' slanders hurled 
 from the press 
 
 The last message of the President of Venezuela, 
 General Cipriano Castro, forcibly shows by itself 
 what can be accomplished when an unwavering 
 will power is directed by true patriotism. 
 
 Sober-minded and impartial men will know him 
 to value the true worth of the I,eader of the " Res- 
 tauration," and that this will be a fact is an honor 
 to his name and a glory to Venezuela. 
 
 Respectfully, 
 
 PEDRO RAFAEL RiNCONES, 
 Consul General of Tenczuela 
 
 New York, May 23, 1904. 
 
GENERAL CIPRIANO CASTRO, 
 
 Constitutional President of Venezuela 
 
MESSAGE 
 
 OF 
 
 GENERAL CIPRIANO CASTRO, 
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL PRESIDENT OF VENEZUELA, 
 
 TO CONGRESS OF 1904. 
 
 Senators and Representatives! 
 
 With patriotic effusion I send you my greetings and congratula- 
 tions and congratulate myself as well on this day of grateful im- 
 pressions, that is to make an epoch in the annals of our contem- 
 porary history. 
 
 We leave behind trickles of blood and many tears and ruins, but 
 we have obtained at last what we wished, what in several occasions 
 I have promised to the Republic. 
 
 First we have rehabilitated the faith that lay forgotten, owing 
 to the mistakes of the past and to the treasons to their words of 
 some of our public men. 
 
 We have founded the public confidence, rooted to-day steadily 
 in the thinking and patriotic majority of the Venezuelans ; and 
 that confidence will bring foreign capital and arms, which by 
 means of labor will share with us the exuberance of our natural 
 riches. We shall have a good administration that will develop the 
 great enterprises to which civilization summons us, enterprises 
 to-day paralyzed by causes known to all, the absence of which has 
 been in part a motive of our civil revolts because the administration 
 of our public men has been more for them than for the general 
 convenience, and instead of being slaves to their duties, they have 
 tried to make slaves for their services ! 
 
 And lastly, we shall have the blessed and longed-for peace, 
 permanent and solid basis upon which we ought to undertake the 
 great work of the liberal restoration that has made so many sacri- 
 fices to save itself and save the Republic! 
 
 But it is necessary not to be mistaken in order that this work 
 
may succeed and be completed ; it is necessary not to forget that 
 everything is to be done, and that one goes into the restoration 
 not by the ways of the parties that exhaust themselves for the sake 
 of their idols, but by the field of the ideas and of the true political 
 integrity. 
 
 It is necessary not to forget that if the restoration, without 
 asking where they come from accepts all who wish spontaneously 
 to serve its cause that a rule of its programme is the purity of the 
 doctrine and the pulchritude of the proceedings. 
 
 It is necessary not to forget that the restoration neither supports 
 nor accepts shams that are now cruel for being extremely ridicu- 
 lous, and that the same seduces and convinces with tangible facts 
 that must last in works, in order that the efficiency of its example 
 in the public conscience may also last. 
 
 It is necessary, lastly,'to know that the strength of the restora- 
 tion consists especially in the truth, that is the basis of all justice 
 and all success ; neither punishment for the innocent, nor absolute 
 toleration for the criminal, however much this may be considered 
 a good method to gather proselytes and make politics. Neither 
 premium for the wicked nor contempt for the good servants, as 
 have been doing the founders of systems to perpetuate themselves 
 in power. 
 
 The perpetuity of the restoration is to be realized by the excel- 
 lence of its doctrines and the greatness of its plan, without treach- 
 eries, without deceit, without infamies and without false liberation, 
 that is good only to be puffed, not to take roots in the conscience 
 ■of the people. To falsify the doctrine is to make it loathsome and 
 ■Contemptible. It is by the liberalism, as it has been conceived from 
 Jesus Christ to the present time by all those who have sacrificed 
 themselves for the Vv^elfare and progress of mankind, the liberalism 
 as it inspired and founded the Liberal Restoration party in the 
 borders of the river Tachira, when its initiators swore it under a 
 serene and blue sky, and fulgent stars, witnesses of their sincerity 
 and good faith, in the memorable night of May 23rd, 1899. 
 
 And it is for this that the Restoration opens its arms to all, and 
 solicits wills, not subdued, but convinced ; and asks, not the con- 
 venience but the conscience. And it is for this that the leader of 
 the Restoration proclaims sooner than the pardon that reviles, .the 
 
worthy fondness that strengthens the party of his great aspirations. 
 He needs and demands a new sap that invigorates and raises, and 
 liot poisoned blood that gangrenes the work that so many sacrifices 
 have cost to the Republic and the loyal servants of the Restor- 
 ation. 
 
 And so it is that the present politics, by virtue of what has hap- 
 pened, has been obliged to be of repression ; because the national 
 independence, that should indefectibly be in danger before new 
 strife, ought not to be exposed any longer. 
 
 Venezuela, the cradle of the Liberator and of the Revolution that 
 recovered our liberties, is called to superior fates, and it is urgent 
 that we all get ready in consequence to fulfil our duties of patriots, 
 imposing upon ourselves the necessary sacrifices to answer, in the 
 first place to the efiforts of our Liberators, then to the solemn obli- 
 gations that the Liberal Restoration Party has contracted with the 
 country, and finally to look for the internal satisfaction that is 
 always produced in us by the accomplishment of our duties. 
 
 Evidently we have found ourselves in such exceptional circum- 
 stances that it would not be easy to the historical judgment to 
 ascribe the same importance to the other epochs of our republican 
 existence, so prolific in painful disasters. 
 
 Eveiry one of you carries undoubtedly in his conscience, shaken 
 still by the past storm, a painful vibration ; every one of you brings, 
 as gathered in the ambient air of the localities, a strange blast that 
 shakes up his spirit with emotions consisting at the same time of 
 grief and of comfort; and thus, by virtue only of this alternative, 
 your souls of patriots ought to have found the true orientation of 
 the providential purposes. 
 
 In fact, it is already time, and no opportunity so favorable as 
 this, seriously to meditate as regards to the mysterious progress of 
 occurrences, seemingly conducted by a sueprior saving tendency 
 towards the merciful solutions of the national rehabilitation. 
 
 During this fatidic Olympiad just closed, where was heard above 
 only the clash of a storm broken loose, below something as a pro- 
 found rumor of catastrophe, and while the thunderbolt fell devas- 
 tating all, the earth throbbed in convulsions of cataclysm. 
 • All the horizons were black, all the adverse forces unbridled, and 
 all the passions carried away ; it was the collapse of the country, 
 
as of a structure badly built which the hurricane whips, it was the 
 breakage of all the ties, the dissolution of all the bonds of union, 
 all the pernicious elements realizing the frightful social devastation. 
 
 Many souls did not keep faith in that emergency at any risk 
 predominating of an authority energetically steady and always 
 decorously dressed out by the honor of the person who exercises 
 it ; many spirits hesitated, or were overflowed by the muddy waves 
 of the disaster, that had all the phases, all the aspects of great 
 desolations. But, if there were moments in which perhaps only 
 one human eye saw sparkle in the deep darkness the star of re- 
 demption, never extinguished for manly citizens, there were also 
 characters that kept themselves trusting in the frightful moral 
 wreck ; characters adscript to others who surely God raised to that 
 very great degree of temper that is necessary to confront these 
 formidable conspiracies of fatality, and to whom he gives thanks 
 at this moment, as were rendered to the friendly deities in noisy 
 oblation, by those who many times the Roman faces covered with 
 their majesty, after, they had carried to all the world then known, 
 under the sovereign flight of the legionary eagles, the law formu- 
 lated in the Quirinal hill ; as they are given in the shore of deliver- 
 ance by those who in the stormy solitudes of the sea have proved 
 that they know how to defy death and founder with the flag of 
 justice and their country in their arms. 
 
 That character, members of Congress, was not wanting in Vene- 
 zuela in this critical conjunction of all the dark historical flows of 
 mischief, that, by the enigmatic ways in which the connection of 
 the causes and the effects is realized in the tendency of the races, 
 have come pushing forward, till they have made this great explo- 
 sion that reverberated in the universe. 
 
 That eye which intensely looked upon the star of redemption, 
 that character turned of steel and kept up in the high vision of the 
 ideal, performed undoubtedly a plan devised in the infinite 
 unknown of the Supreme Power who rules the destiny of the 
 peoples and points out to each man his mission and his labor. I 
 have done nothing; I have not deliberately accommodatel myself 
 with the circumstances now traded with men. My duty was higher 
 and I have performed it ; it was to serve as an immovable dam 
 where the impetuous uproar of barbarism would come to be shat- 
 
 8 
 
lered. I have cloiie my duty because my faith was unconquerable ; 
 that faith made me see at this side of the stormy and cloudy sky 
 the fair weather, and made me forebode that that was the vast 
 tragical preface of the spectacle of seriousness and progress that 
 Venezuela is perhaps called to present to the world ; that which 
 was the long and agitated estuary that precedes the quiet and 
 safe harbor. ' 
 
 From that faith and from the acts it excited the Republic comes 
 forth pacified, the militarism punished arid perhaps dead, the 
 administration directed to new roads ; the official judgment 
 inspired in ideas before unknown and realizing proceedings that 
 are the preliminaries of the gr£at work of peace and solid progress 
 in all the sphe'res of the national life, that the actual Restoration 
 brings in its programme, henceforth more venerable and dearer 
 to our hearts for the baptism of blood and the unction of heroism 
 and grief which it received in this great struggle and from the 
 programme of which it comes forth transfigured and shining. 
 
 And now has arrived the work of reconstruction. 
 
 If we survey, members of Congress, with a reflective thought 
 the pages of our sorrowful history, we will carry only to the barn 
 of experience a crop of mistaken tears and blood which frightens 
 the most indifferent spirit. 
 
 We have dragged along the national dignity .through all the 
 disorders of political insanity, we have left on the fields of battle, 
 sacrificed in unfruitful hecatombs, the best of generations, and 
 also the ideal, the hope and the faith ; the Republic has been plun- 
 dered with astonishing ease, with surprising shamefulness, to the 
 extreme of making valid and natural the disgraceful theory that 
 the official callings are not offices of honor and well meaning 
 service to the Republic, but open breaches to the national treas- 
 ury; that public life is not a field of honor on which to collect 
 laurels and merits to the gratitude of the people, but exchange of 
 usury and speculation where one goes to grab and snatch unappro- 
 priated wealth which the most dexterous or the most cynical may 
 apply to himself with plausibly freedom * * * The public 
 wealth has been misspent with idiotic perverseness ; we have not 
 only stopped the national prosperity, but we have succeeded in 
 inoving backward the unhappy country to conditions never seen 
 
before ; ruined cities that were important centers of industrial and 
 commercial activity in times not favorable to freedom and to law ; 
 and we have come even to see sincere, intelligent and thofightful 
 men speculate upon the strange problem whether we shall have 
 lost instead of gained by independence. 
 
 I ask, members of Congress, if this is not very sorrowful, and 
 with my hand in my conscience, I interpeal the upright men that 
 they answer me in the same way if it was not absolutely necesr 
 sary and urgent to stop the country in that giddy slope that car- 
 ried it away to the abyss, to the unexpressible shame of total 
 discredit, and perhaps — awful probability — to the horrible retro- 
 gression of being a colony. Because the look of the foreigner, the 
 grasping and foreseeing e}'e of the great Powers that need expan- 
 sion for their plethoric life, from the efforts of their intelligent 
 and laborious arms ; that permanent look which constanth" dis^ 
 turbs the inter-tropical populations considered as half savage by 
 those who believe that civilization and the future are their patri- 
 mony ; that look, 1 say, does not withdraw from us, and there was 
 even an occasion to see very near to the sacred body of the 
 country, the transgressing hand also, although shaking with 
 anger we were disposed to mutilate it. 
 
 But politics is not the art of fighting to die gloriously, but the 
 science of foreseeing, of avoiding the catastrophes in the careful 
 study of the evolution of societies. What might we have gained 
 dying heroically in defense of the country as we would have done? 
 To appear as suicides, because such a tragic conclusion could not 
 be but the fatal results of a whole life, not of childlike rashness, 
 but of stupid improvidence. 
 
 There are in history abundant cases of turbulent republics, play- 
 things of exasperated ambitions and unlikely craziness, nationali; 
 ties lost and gained as by a chance in the gambling dens, in that 
 licentiousness of humanity that filled with darkness and blood the 
 Middle Ages, for instance ; and many optimistic intelligences^ 
 well meaning, wishing a remedy to the country, at least in ideal 
 comparisons, that the philosophy of history does not indorse, con- 
 sole themselves in the hope of a spontaneous new birth come forth 
 by the same national forces restored in an orderly manner to a 
 beneficent coherence. Nevertheless the present civilization does 
 not give time for the realization of such spontaneous new births, 
 
 lo 
 
whicli result from a social process that we have not been able ta 
 see in our zone. 
 
 Those were the times of the fulfillment of the slow and mysteri- 
 ous germination of ideas in the universal conscience; powerful' 
 elaboration of radical thoughts, that for the stratifications — if the- 
 word is allowed — of the human spirit expanded themselves pushing: 
 forward in unknown ascension., as the explosive Stuff of a vol- 
 cano, imtil they burst with a terrific crashing in the eighteenth 
 century and crowned that summit of history which is called the 
 French Revolution with the eternal crest of fire that the genera- 
 tions shall behold across the ages. But in the present days the 
 influence of ideas is already grown firm ; the law formulated in 
 beautiful codes among us theoretically more beautiful still, pro- 
 tects the individual in the societies of age, or vigorously preco- 
 cious * * * and, notwithstanding, that law is twisted and 
 seeks support in sophisms, with regard to weak nationalities, or 
 above 'all, to misguided groups, that have not found yet the clear 
 course of their destiny. 
 
 And such is our case. 
 
 Consequently \ve v/ant to be on our guard against the threat 
 that sinistrously gleams in the haziness of the gloomy omen ; we 
 ought to invigorate ourselves within our frontiers, as anemic 
 organisms, with energetic reconstituents, we ought in conclusion 
 to assume an international personality, that we will not be able to 
 obtain if we do not profoundly modify the routinary proceedings, 
 and do not renew with new materials, strong and useful, the juri- 
 dical elements of our legislation. 
 
 And this is not an intellectual speculation of mine, whimsical or 
 idealistic, that would be strange in such a man as I. On the con- 
 trary, I think, that our political writers and our ambitious dema- 
 gogues carried too far, since the cradle of the nation, the revolu- 
 tionary a.?pirations to go ofl" substituting with radical laws, juris- 
 prudences qualified with blunder as conservatives, in uncivilized 
 peoples, scions of the Iberian conquest and strange consequently 
 to the public functions in the ample rule of law. We went beyond 
 the discreet limit and have reached an absolute lack of circum- 
 spection in the matter. 
 
 These decisive affirmations of mine shall produce surprise in 
 
 II 
 
some, but to those, if they know the politics of this country, and 
 are acquainted with our needs and our laws, I will ask how they 
 would govern the Republic without exposing themselves to violate 
 the latter in these permanent agitations ; and how, men of con- 
 science and reflection, might they accept a power descending from 
 the laws, to exercise it in falsehood, believing knowingly the origi- 
 nal titles of their authority. 
 
 It is with historical facts that such asseverations are proved. 
 For some time past to the present, precisely when the laws were 
 more advanced in liberal promises, there was scarcely a govern- 
 ment not invested with extraordinary faculties, and our annals are 
 the official chronicle of consecutive dictatorships. 
 
 It is not always right to blame the magistrates imputing to them 
 fondness to abuse the supreme power, nor is it a pleasant burden, 
 that exclusive responsibility in the exercise of power, for a dis- 
 creet roan who respects his name and wishes quietly to hand it 
 over to the judgment of history. The truth is that the legislation 
 in force since several years is not in accordance with the political 
 practices, nor with the public customs, nor with the natural 
 character. 
 
 To remedy this fundamental contradiction belongs to your illus- 
 trated reasoning. Legislators of the Republic, and thus you shall 
 have done a work more civilizing, and of greater efficiency and 
 more fruitful transcendancy to the future of the country, than all 
 that might be done in other matters and in another form. I would 
 change with pleasure my title of conqueror warrior for the title 
 of philosophical legislator, because the triumphs by arms repre- 
 sents the temporal imposition of a flag of struggle, the consolida- 
 tion and prestige of an authority that may perish with the man 
 who represents it, while the affirmation of the laws in philosophy 
 and in human knowledge, means social stability, political and juri- 
 dical of the nation on a firm and ample basis, where it shall be able 
 to develop without hindrances, without convulsions, and without 
 deficiencies. 
 
 And such is the vow of the people. 
 
 Nobody can be deceived in the presence of this formidable out- 
 cry which has resounded in the whole circuit of the Republic and 
 reaches the walls of the Capitol, as a powerful wave, irresistible 
 
 12 
 
and subduing everything to mark out with indubitable eloquence 
 the position itinerary to your criticism of legislators. In this 
 solemn moment of national crisis we are going to the conquest 
 of something sacred, we are going to the conquest of true liberty, 
 of law, of peace ; and as the cry of "God wills it" in the stentorian 
 voice of the worthy Hermit resounded in other times cheering the 
 crusaders, we can say to-day that there is heard in the ambient air 
 of the country the decisive and not less powerful cry, "The people 
 imlls it." 
 
 And this great movement of the spirits towards the ideal reform 
 is redeemed since its origin of all indecorous suspicions, because 
 it is not possible to suppose in the manner and occasion in which 
 it is developing and imposing itself and ambitious subterfuge, a 
 stupid prurient of permanence in power, as regards the present 
 natural magistracy. No, it is not this process, as I had already a 
 solemn opportunity to proclaim it, the petition of prorogation of 
 the power of a man commencing the constitutional period which 
 ought not to be altered, as you shall be able to see in the vow of the 
 peoples, it would be ridiculous to suppose that we seek in the 
 reform of the laws a selfish modification of the terms of the author- 
 ity, or an ungrateful prolongation in the exercise of power. Yes, 
 Legislators, this great thought is redeemed from such a shadow, 
 and this ought to be sufficient in order that your patriotic criterion 
 freely deliberates so that your ideas undertake their vigorous and 
 sure flight towards the anxiously desired end. 
 
 In regard to me, I have performed the duty which, was pointed 
 out to me in the development of events and in the irresistible orien- 
 tations of my conscience, and I have wished now to complete it 
 exposing before you my ideas and convictions with the frankness 
 of an honest man and the sincerity of my love for the country, 
 demonstrated in all the acts of ray life. 
 
 A careful labor and an unquestionable prudence require those 
 momentous labors in which you are going to exercise your sover- 
 eign legislative and reformist faculty, so we would not expose our- 
 selves to fall in the great work that we undertake, and to leave in 
 discordance the needs and hopes of the peoples, the principles that 
 claim predominance in the collection of laws, with the result that 
 we shall offer to our contemporaries and our successors. 
 
 13 
 
To do our work we have authority and favorable ambient air ; 
 the first, conquered in the irrevocable imposition of the programme 
 of restoration in all the manifestations of human exertions ; the 
 second, forrried by the popular will in the vast revelation that we 
 all have witnessed. 
 
 After having established the firm basis of the jaws that ought to 
 rule the Republic, the work of the Government shall be less 
 laborious; politics and administration shall not carry within 
 themselves -the irnmorality of the unforeseen in their functions 
 and their benefits, but they shall be the broad ways wherein in- 
 teligent and patriotic efforts shall reach success, the initial inten- 
 tion reaping honor, the country that needs the intelligence and 
 good will of its sons more than their life, collecting advantages. 
 
 Such is my hope and my purpose' in what may depend upon me, 
 and with this object I have proclaimed already in publicly known 
 occasions the urgent necessity of obliterating the frontiers of the 
 parties to join in a single noble and exalted aspiration, the wishes 
 of all patriots, to compact in a sublime oblation of the national 
 soul the vehement desire of a successful future for the country we 
 love, while the national rainbow blazing with the majesty of the 
 eternal and sacred things in the capitol's summit, protects us and 
 inspires in us that solid and consistent duty which, when rooted 
 in the heart of citizens, realizes in history the beautiful ideal of a 
 free and powerful nationality. 
 
 SENATORS AND DEPUTIES.' 
 
 The work of peace, diligent aspiration of the restoration arms, 
 begins already its work, and in coming to the detail of my report 
 you will remark undoubtedly that there has not been lost an instant 
 in the impulsion of the politics and the administration by the 
 more ample and fruitful courses of prosperity, glory and har- 
 mony. 
 
 It is little for my ambition what has been done until to-day ; a 
 scanty yield to the riches of my aspirations in the way of the wel- 
 fare and the greatness of the country ; a poor contribution cer- 
 tainly, if compared with the amount of my good will to increase 
 in better days our historical heap, exceeded until to-day by the 
 mistaken and misfortunes of our past existence. 
 
 14 
 
The fair weather has commenced, but just commenced. It 
 seems still that the echo repeats in the vast and beautiful territory 
 the sounds of the bugle, the crash in the battlefield makes our 
 ]ierves shake still with the emotion of the fight, beautiful epic 
 emotion, favorable to glory, stimulant of the martial laurel, but 
 full of bitterness] And let it be allowed to me at this moment that 
 it rebounds in the placid ambient air of the country to utter a cry 
 of my conscience, of my spirit, that is in love with civilization and 
 culture ; my triumphs are painful to me. It is painful to me that 
 the field where I have gathered the palm that crowns to-day my 
 • forehead were watered with blood of brothers. I regret to have 
 been obliged to move my sword to fulminate guilty Venezuelans, 
 obfuscated countrymen of ours. How much sorrow and what a 
 cruel situation for my soul, simultaneously moved by pity and 
 justice; by pity towards a countryman sunk- in opprobrium and 
 chastised by my arm: and by justice which imposes on one the 
 duty of punishing brothers, not only guilty of heavy faults, but 
 culprits of high treason. 
 
 So, then, the fair weather has just commenced ; but we have 
 already placed above the ravages of war, above the disasters of 
 discord, the branch-symbol of the repairing labors, the effort of 
 reconstruction above the moral ruins of the conventions admitted 
 and consecrated for long, with the unfrangible purpose of substi- 
 tuting the falsehood- predominant until now, with the refulgent 
 truth of self-denying facts, of the heroic consecrations, and of 
 principles to which henceforth the life of the Republic ought to be 
 submitted to save itself and be prosperous and great in civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 HOME AFFAIRS. 
 
 I call your attention to the decree that rules the grant and use 
 of the decoration of the bust of the Liberator. And I speak first 
 of this because that Order of. Honor, instituted in memory of the 
 father of the country, the founder of five nations, to reward the 
 exalted merit and the eminent servants of the Republic and of 
 humanity, has become with deplorable complacency or resignation 
 of a great many, but with regret of the patriots, an object of 
 childish speculation, a way of satisfying cheap ambitions or silly 
 
 15 
 
vanities, and a distinction favorable to the unserviceable. I dis- 
 posed by said decree that the Executive could place a legal obstacle 
 on the overflowing of foolishness in order to restore to that 
 coveted premium its original splendor, and the respect that ought 
 to inspire to all, national and foreigners, that institution sacred to 
 honest men, in whom conscience have a voice the prerogatives of 
 merit, and to soldiers of honor who are opposed to decorate 
 unworthy or vacuous chests with the brilliant badge which is a 
 guiding star for noble aspirations. 
 
 I have decreed the Code of Commerce, the Penal Code, and the. 
 Codes of Civil arid Criminal Proceedings. Those standing were 
 deficient and inadequate, and in the general plan of legal rectifica- 
 tions that history and public opinion have imposed on my criterion, 
 I have thought urgent to sanction these new Codes, that as a fore- 
 cast of the epoch ought to satisfy the necessities which those 
 branches of the administration perpetuate. 
 
 The Code of Commerce was not revised since 1873. Thus, it was 
 urgent to place it at the height of the modern commercial legisla- 
 tion and in accordance with the necessities made evident in the 
 elapsed thirty years. 
 
 There is well regulated in this Code the working of the Ex- 
 changes and Chambers of Commerce and the conveyance by rail- 
 way, not mentioned in the previous Code, the provisions of which 
 in the matter reached only the droves of beasts of burden and 
 the carts. Rules have been established to which should be sub- 
 mitted the promoters and subscribers of the companies, and also 
 the constitution of these and the duties of the administrators, to 
 offer to the stockholders a better knowledge of the acts of those 
 functionaries and sufficient guarantees, even against the imposi- 
 tions of an unjust majority whichsoever ; laws have been enacted 
 as regards the foreign societies which make business in the coun- 
 try, and there is a chapter about the firms of commerce, to guar- 
 antee their legitimate use, and end the sham practice of com- 
 panies in which there are no associates. We have substituted the 
 old theory that considers the drafts of commerce as the result of a 
 pact, the one that attributes to them the simple character of deben- 
 tures of payment. In the matter of bankruptcies you will find 
 
 16 
 
some important reforms, as the one that permits an honest mer- 
 chant, momentarily in debt, to pay his arrears without becoming a 
 bankrupt, and the one that subjects to brief and summary proce- 
 dures the failures of minor amount ; and in the organizations of the 
 Courts of Commerce the procedure by associates has been estab- 
 lished as in the Civil Courts, to avoid the excuses of co- judges and 
 the delays of suits. 
 
 The Codes of Proceeding simplify and make more efficient the 
 terms that justice needs, for the positive safeguard of social order 
 and the sanction of the principles in which this order rests and 
 produces its benefits. As regards the Penal, I sincerely believe 
 that the newest fills up in the best possible way the present exigen- 
 cies of the society in which we live, and the objects attributed to it 
 in legislation. It is developed upon a methodic and philosophic 
 ])lan arranged for its clearer intelligence and practical applications. 
 Considering the vital importance of this branch of the administra- 
 tion, which carries within the most essential and delicate of the 
 public order, I have made efforts to give to this book the clearness 
 it requires, so that the confusion of the precepts may not be an in- 
 ducement to the sacrifice of equity: personal pre-occupations dis- 
 tort the luminous rays of the law, spreading in the spirits of 
 vmhappy offenders the suspiciousness of an anticipated judgment 
 or the sorrow of injustice. 
 
 After establishing as the sole division of the transgression of 
 laws the crime and the fault, ideas which are clearly defined, enu- 
 merates in a conclusive way who are to be held responsible, stating 
 and extending till it is possible among us, the causes that exempt, 
 diminish or aggrieve the responsibility according to the scientific 
 modern ideal. Extensively formulated the conception of the trans- 
 gressions and the correlative penalties, the latter have been pointed 
 out in the more conservative-way with the spirit of justice, of guar- 
 antees and of democracy, that rules in our society. 
 
 The penal criterion has been until now very deficient among us ; 
 ■with a prodigious rapidity of imagination we impetuously pass 
 from the fragility of the juridical precept on an almost feminine 
 sentimentalism that leaves the guilty unpunished or nearly so, to 
 the cruel decisions which enrage the misguided minds, hurt the 
 j>erene spirits and offend the immutable Providence, of whom the 
 
 17 
 
powers worthy of government are implicitly delegates. I do not 
 pretend that Mercy, the great and benefactress Mercy, be banished 
 from the Courts of Justice, I only aspire to make it not a personal 
 attribution, capriciously applied according to the will of the Magis- 
 trates, but to have it established and pre-eminent as a sparkle of the 
 sovereignty of God and a glorious conquest of the Christian phil- 
 osophy, in the same provisions of the law, in the discrimination of 
 the transgressions and in the procedure for the application of 
 penalties. 
 
 Thus, the present Code establishes for some crimes greater pun- 
 ishments than those formerly applied, and for some others lesser ; 
 and double pimishments have been in general eliminated, since it is 
 an equitable institution, as a principle of justice, not to impose for 
 any transgression, two penalties of those qualified by- the laws as 
 principal. 
 
 Lastly, I have made efforts in order that the modifications, which 
 the previous Codes required, and in these you vv^ill see accomplished 
 — (evidently substantial all of them) — obey the tendencies of the 
 epoch, that public- opinion and the impositions of my submission to 
 it desire to characterize as innovators, until there is established the 
 true and fruitful relation between the laws and the customs that 
 they should rule, since it is odious and practically impossible a leg- 
 islation that does not agree, for being behind or in advance with 
 the society that wants to obey it. 
 
 , The report of Foreign Affairs will give you a notice of all the 
 measures of political and administrative reorganization of the Re- 
 public, and you will see the thought of the Government in the elec- 
 tion of his servants, and the reverence he has always rendered to 
 truth and duty. 
 
 Your law of April it, 1903, on the Rights and Duties of For- 
 eigners in Venezuela, which I ordered to be executed on the i6th of 
 the same month and year, gave motive to several questions pro- 
 posed by the States, which were answered by the respective bureau, 
 resolving that the foreigners residing in the sections of the Re- 
 public should present themselves spontaneously to accomplish what 
 said law prescribes without the authorities taking coercive meas- 
 ures to. that effect, remaining in fact under their action when the 
 opportunity may arrive and subject consequently to the resolu- 
 
 18 
 
tions of the National Executive, those that would not fulfil the 
 established prescriptions. And it was also ruled the judicial pro- 
 cedure for the sequel of the claims, in order that those proceed- 
 ings be filled in the conditions required by the probity and the 
 interest of the nation. 
 
 As the Attorney General has been occupied with the labors that 
 the Mixed Commissions created for him, said functionary was 
 provisionally substituted in the remaining duties of his office by 
 the Fiscal of the Republic, employment instituted with this object 
 with the legal attribute of the other. 
 
 Ninety-three persons have solicited and obtained in this year 
 letters of Venezuelan naturalization; and it is curious that pre- 
 cisely in these moments of crisis the amount of these new country- 
 men be greater than in the last thirty years of our natural life. 
 
 The mobilization of the live stock has been rapid and astonish- 
 ing. The suppression of the previous taxes, suggested by the 
 Federal Executive, has contributed to this result ; and the expor- 
 tation of the cattle has increased so much that I can consign it 
 here as a fountain of labor and riches, which the Government 
 commenced carefully to cultivate as soon as normalization returned 
 to the Republic. From July, 1902, to December, 1903 — eighteen 
 months — 77,489 heads of cattle were exported from Venezuela, 
 and you will find the details and specifications in the respective 
 report. 
 
 And not only those taxes on cattle were suppressed, but the 
 others which the war and the past conflicts compelled to create in 
 the sections, so that the industrial interests, agricultural and com- 
 mercial, enjoy already the necessary conditions for their ample 
 development, ahd the sectional governments punctually receive 
 their legal allowance. 
 
 We have solenmly celebrated the feasts that patriotism conse- 
 crates to the commemoration of the great events of the Republic. 
 
 Our relations with the ecclesiastical authority have been dis- 
 creet and cordial, and by the respective report you will know the 
 satisfactory course and solution of what has happened that was 
 grave and dangerous for the peace of the consciences and the free 
 and decorous working of the Church and of worship. The Rev- 
 erend Father Juan Bautista Castro, D.D., honorable and learned 
 
 19 
 
priest, was proposed by the Government to Rome and accepted — 
 owing to the deplorable sickness of Monsignor Uzcatagui— as 
 Coadjutor Bishop of the Archdiocese of Caracas and Venezuela, 
 with the right to succeed to this high dignity, and he is person- 
 ally at Rome to be consecrated, making previously oath of fidelity 
 to the laws of the Republic. 
 
 "\^enezuela, the Government and myself, have joined, disturbed 
 by profound grief, the mourning of Christianity before the tomb 
 of Leo XIII. The passing of that superior and illustrious man 
 for the Holy See marks a radiant track in history and a sensation 
 of relief in the human spirit. He honored Providence and human- 
 ity with the admirable exercise of all the attributes of extra'ordi- 
 nary men, from the fine and transcendental diplomacy of the Pon- 
 tifical Power, from the skilled politics and sublime piety, to the 
 brilliant culture of learning and poetry which reminds the inspira- 
 tion that vibrated in the Latium. 
 
 I give also to you, thinking men, of government and patriotism, 
 my condolence for this always lamentable misfortune. 
 
 FOREIGN RELATIONS. 
 
 I now come to give you an account of our Foreign Relations, 
 which, owing to the occurrence of events which are universally 
 known, demanded at one time all the attention of the Government. 
 
 From the international conflict which was produced by the 
 foreign aggression and the blockade of our coasts, arose great 
 ■obligations, recorded in the Protocols signed at Washington, the 
 fulfilment of which was unavoidable. To fight in defence of the 
 dignity of the Republic, and to add to our classic examples of hero- 
 ism new acts of valor, would have been relatively easy for one 
 such as I am, always ready to offer sacrifice on the altars of my 
 country, and for a people such as that of Venezuela, who do not 
 take the enemy into account and know how to rise above the diffi- 
 culties of the case, facing danger with that fearless attitude which 
 is assured by their past deeds; it was not the work of war that 
 fate demanded ; but called upon us to have recourse to our almost 
 exhausted national patrimony. It was not bravery, of which we 
 had more than sufficient, that we needed ; it was money, of which 
 
 20 
 
we were defickht, that we had to find in order to safeguard the 
 h'oiior ind thfe ftrttfre of the ReptibHc. 
 
 The struggle wfthin the cou'fitry compHcated the situation to an 
 extraordinary degree, for the rebels in that strti'ggle were the 
 principal promoters of that siiptreme danger of foreign interven- 
 tion. Fortunately the oniihous plan failed before the well consid- 
 ered action of the Government and our nationality avoided the 
 shoal which arose so suddenly amidst the tempest through which 
 we were passing. 
 
 The engagernent to deliver immediately in cash money to the 
 
 surh of . . . , B 2,031,023.35 pursuant to the provisions of 
 
 the Washington Protocols,, for the purpose of satisfying the per- 
 emptory demands of Germany, England and Italy, has' been com- 
 plied with ; and on learning the decision which The Hague Court 
 of Arbitration must shortly make the claimants will be able to 
 receive a cohsideraT>le siim on account of the credits recognized by 
 the Mixed Commissions. 
 
 In fulfilment of its duty, the Executive carried into execution 
 the provisions of your Resolution of the 28th of May, 1903, re- 
 garding the Protocols signed by the Agent of Venezuela and the 
 Representatives of the Allied Powers. The same Agent after- 
 wards signed other international agreements with the Representa- 
 tives of France, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Sweden and Norway, 
 the United States and Mexico, in virtue whereof the examination 
 of the credits which the citizens and subjects of the said States 
 had against the nation was submitted to a proceeding analogous 
 to that arranged with England, Italy and Germany. 
 
 At the date when your last sessions terminated the said Proto- 
 cols had not yet leached our Chancellery, but nevertheless it 
 seemed both expedient and beneficial to put them also into imme- 
 diate execution. The day appointed by them for the constitution 
 of the Mixed Commissions was drawing near, and any delay in 
 that constitution might have hurt the credit of the Government, 
 which our word had so solemnly pledged. The Minister of this 
 IDepartment will give you a detailed account of these agreements, 
 and will ask of you, as I also now do, an expression of opinion 
 regarding trie conduct which in that regard the Executive was 
 ■obliged to observe. 
 
 21 
 
The Arbitration Commissions whichj in execution of the Pro- 
 tocols signed, were charged to examine and decide on the claims 
 made against Venezuela, were installed at this capital on the first 
 of June last past. In perfect independence the said bodies termi- 
 nated their labors with the exception of three, which are still func- 
 tioning. The total of the French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Bel- 
 gian and Mexican claims which have been recognized amounts to 
 B 20,928,466.93. 
 
 The original amount of these claims was B 50,559,366.01 ; so 
 that such a marked difference between what was claimed and what 
 was justly due, is a proof that a mercantile and abusive spirit, had 
 now as formerly, availed itself of our disturbances to a'chieve pros- 
 perity. This proof is another confirmation of the judgment already 
 formed by experience of the Commissions established in former 
 epochs with functionaries of the Republic and at the same time an 
 efficacious argument against the opposition that this proceeding 
 on the part of Venezuela has had to encounter in practice, and 
 which is founded on the suspicion of partiality by which it has 
 been desired to discredit the awards of the said Commissions. 
 
 The nation had given to foreign claimants the right to appeal to 
 the High Federal Court, in cases in which they thought such a 
 course necessitated by the decisions of the Boards for the Qualify- 
 ing of Credits. In this way the path for obtaining justice was 
 widened, and the Republic was placed in a position to discuss con- 
 veniently all demands brought against her. So that judicially and 
 equitably speaking, these Arbitral Commissions have no raison 
 d'etre, when Governments recognize in accordance with the prin- 
 ciples of Justice, as Venezuela has done, their national responsi- 
 bilit}' towards private individuals and their interests — be they na- 
 tionals or foreigners — and consequently establish adequate pro- 
 ceedings for obtaining the compensation that should be demanded. 
 And that legal right, established by the Decree of the 14th of 
 February, 1S73, received full and recent confirmation by our law 
 of the past year on the rights and duties of foreigners, from which 
 we should hope a sufficient guarantee in the future. 
 
 The force of events obliged us on this occasion to adopt a means 
 which, although perfectly worthy of acceptance for deciding mat- 
 ters of another character — since it is entirely in accord with the 
 
 22 
 
modern spirit of civilization, and. is recommended by all thinkers, 
 and also desired by all men of good will — is, in cases like the one 
 in question, absolutely contrary to the noble designs of those who 
 have advocated its adoption, since those matters which may afifect 
 the sovereignty of States, are, and must always be outside the gen- 
 erous and Christian orbit of the principle of arbitration. It is an 
 elementary concept that the nation has the right to organize the 
 administration of justice, being possessed of autonomous inde- 
 pendence, so that the idea and the reality of that independence 
 would be expressions wanting in sense if foreign powers had the 
 faculty uiider any pretext whatsoever to administer justice or what 
 they should fraudulently and capriciously use as such, to their 
 subjects in foreign lands. 
 
 And this, in synthesis, was the thought that underlay the aggres- 
 sion which we have suffered; If anything can contribute to attenu- 
 ate the hurt to our patriotism, in so glorious an emergency of our 
 national life, and the fear of men that we can be preoccupied for 
 the fate of our nationality, it is the conviction — which lies very 
 deep in my conscience — that only under the shadow of our pro- 
 found international disturbances, could it have been realized under 
 the conditions which characterized it, and with the success whiclx 
 it obtained. In fact, those most deserving of the blame for it are 
 the revolutionary Venezuelans who favored it by their conduct and 
 by their connivance, occasioned and encouraged it, up to the point 
 of making common cause with the foreigner, without thinking per- 
 haps — or perhaps knowingly, that in exchange for the temporary 
 support the revolution might achieve, at the cost of its credit and 
 to its own shame, they were compromising the national integrity 
 and the independence of the Republic. There is no pretext what- 
 soever which could render such an error plausible, it being in 
 fact a great crime. 
 
 Such is my conviction in this regard and I consequently believe 
 with abundant reason, that without the complicity of the revolu- 
 tionists, the foreigners would not have come to our shores in the 
 aggressive manner which they did. This example will remain for 
 the edification of our patriotism and an eloquent lesson for future 
 generations ! 
 
 Of the awards made by the Mixed Commissions it was neces- 
 
 23 
 
sary and obligatory for us to protest against the one relating to 
 the claim made by the General Company of the Caracas Water 
 Works. That award being in flagrant contradiction to the Jjro- 
 visions of the Protocol and the principles of equity, the Republic 
 could not admit it, as its recognition would have implied the abdi- 
 cation of its rights and the discredit of the arbitration ; since if 
 similar decisions were to be accepted, being in themselves null, 
 the high ends which are sought by the institution of arbitration 
 for the furtherance of harmony and justice would be turned to 
 ridicule, as would also the trust and confidence which should be 
 deserved by the judges. We had also to make a like protest 
 against the sentence delivered by the respective umpire on appeal 
 made from the Venezuelan-Mexican Commission. That sen- 
 tence, which can only be qualified as absurd, occasioned surprise 
 to everybody, and gave rise to an unpleasant situation for a diplo- 
 mat who had until then been appreciated amongst us. 
 
 The Representative of the Republic refused formally and cate- 
 goricalh' to accord to the allied Powers preferential treatment for 
 the payment of the claims of their nationals ; and it Was necessary 
 to refer the matter, for definite decision, to the Permanent Coltrt 
 of Arbitration at The Hague, created by the Treaty of the 29th 
 of July, 1899. Undoubtedh' A^'enezuela could not, without being: 
 wanting in the most trivial rules of conduct, grant to a certain 
 creditor, to the detriment of others, a favor for the granting of 
 ■which there was not the slightest reason. To admit that the forc- 
 ible manner adopted for the recovery of debts of foreigners, gave 
 Ihem preference, would display ignorance of the just principle of 
 equality among nations, and to place forcible prcJCfiedings above 
 the sound dehberations of justice ; and at the ?ame time to disre- 
 gard and to refuse to follow precedents of a date not remote. We 
 shall perhaps shortly know the award of the Htg^h Tribunal, arid 
 both we, the interested parties and all thinkers who advocate ihe 
 efifectiveness of the ideas which gave that Cdurt life and being, 
 cherish the hope that the sentence to be passt~d will give ample sat- 
 isfaction to the cause which Venezuela has beeti maintaining, to- 
 gether with the majority of the Staites which took part in the 
 recent judicial debates at The Hague. 
 
 Our political relations with the other nations grow daily closer 
 
 24 
 
and more cordial, and this pleasing and praiseworthy end. is in a 
 high degree attributable to the distinguished gentlemen who exer- 
 cise diplomatic functions in Venezuela. 
 
 Nothing has recently altered our friendship with the nations of 
 the world, but the suspension of our amicable intercourse with the 
 Republic of Colombia, which, as you know, was determined by a 
 public manifestation of the Executive of that nation. Venezuela 
 wishes, as in different occasions has proved, even at the expense 
 of the blood of its sons, that the bond of solidarity among the sister 
 nationalities that form this continent, shall grow stronger each; 
 time, not only because that bond is real in blood and in history,, 
 but because the present conveniences of international politics re- 
 quire it. I have no words vivid enovtgh to extol the importance of 
 this thought, its transcendancy in the South Arnerican destiny ! 
 Only being united, we shall be able to grow strong, during the 
 time that each of these people shall not be so within its own front- 
 tiers, definitively to. impose a conduct of peace and justice, and 
 above all of respect, in conformity with the philosophical aspira- 
 tions of the epoch, which preserving internal tranquility, may 
 convey us, through ample and sure ways, to an attitude which 
 shall guarantee our international prerogative and our common 
 interests in the continental domain. 
 
 This is the aspiration of my conscience and the vow of my spirit, 
 and if up to this date Venezuela has not re-established its inter- 
 course — which should be not only political but fraternal — with our 
 sister, the neighbor Republic of Colombia, it has been with my 
 greatest regret. 
 
 As to the other nations with whom we entertain friendly rela- 
 tions, it gives me pleasure to tell you that now as hitherto, Vene- 
 zuela is willing to contribute in the measure of her strength and 
 the sphere of her faculties, to work with them in favor of the mag- 
 nificent woi-k of drawing nearer to each other as recommended by 
 justice and civilization. 
 
 From the beginning of its existence as a Sovereign State Vene- 
 ziiela has been granting to the foreigner such facilities as he needs 
 to freely and quietly obtain the realization of his lawful aspira- 
 tions. She was thus in advance of that movement which more 
 ancient nations were to effect years afterwards, with the identical 
 
 2; 
 
spirit of .liberalit}", by which means she desired not only to assure 
 to the RepubHc the concourse which those foreign energies could 
 offer for her aggrandizement, and which in young nations are 
 vigorous contributions to prosperit}-, but she had the further object 
 of clearly establishing a principle which, in the course of time, 
 would be converted into an indisputable maxim. 
 
 The foreigner was placed on an equal footing with the native in 
 everything concerning civil rights, and like him having at his dis- 
 posal all the means necessary for the development of his activities, 
 his condition was assured on the basis of a perfectly favorable wel- 
 come. The laws of Venezuela have raised no obstacle whatsoever 
 to foreign initiative, but have rather encouraged and strengfthened 
 it. Neither as regards our navigation, nor in the la^\ s which pro- 
 tect life and property, nor in the rules for the guardianship of the 
 family and the individual, has the Republic in any wa)- been heed- 
 less of the protection which the State grants to foreigners, for the 
 i;ame reason as to nationals. _ 
 
 All generous ideas of human interest have always been readily 
 received by our Governments ; and whenever civilization has re- 
 quired our concurrence, in any work destined to the common good, 
 Ihe Republic has given in the best way all that it could. 
 
 It is certain that, to our honor, at no time has she abandoned the 
 ■defence of her sovereign rights and that, jealous of her inherent 
 prerogatives, she has done all that was necessary to preserve intact 
 her status as a free people. But that very purpose, far from being 
 an anchor for the realization of a plan of harm.ony and confrater- 
 nity, is a means of carrying her on to wreckage. Love of one's 
 native country and home, as also the invincible desire to maintain 
 the honor of the nation, has always been the starting point of well 
 understood expansion and correspondence ; because without the 
 respect claimed by every fatherland for itself and which its repre- 
 sentatives and functionaries are under the obligation of maintain- 
 ing, both international law and the principles consecrated by that 
 law, would be impossible. 
 
 Thus, the national limitations which Venezuela has established 
 for the admission of foreigners, and which, during the past year 
 had to be made clear with two of the Legations accredited here, 
 should not be considered as derogatory to the principles of equality 
 
 26 
 
to which I have referred. Without those rules which can be con- 
 sidered as provisions for the political organization and the public 
 tranquility, the consequences which the nationality carries with it 
 would have been nullified and the limits which separate the legiti- 
 mate jurisdiction of nations would be obliterated. 
 
 If the foreigner, through the sole fact of establishing himself in 
 a country, were entirely assimilated to the persons with whom he 
 enters upon a new life, it is clear there would be no reason for the 
 existence of the limits referred to ; but as the like assimilation is 
 impossible, it being granted that the tie existing between the citi- 
 zen and the State is not extinguished by absence alone from the 
 fatherland, a line must necessarily be traced to mark out the 
 sphere of action of natives and foreigners. The same can be said 
 as regards everything which bears relation to the obedience due by 
 foreigners to local laws, because if they were allowed to invoke at 
 every step and not in the special circumstances indicated by law, 
 the protection of their country, and a preferential treatment which 
 would be wrought to the reason which the country had for offering 
 them the same advantages, which as members of the human raqe, 
 natives enjoy, and the faculty, contemporary and consubstantial 
 would place them in a better condition than nationals, an injury 
 with the State to, give itself an organization and proper laws, 
 which should be complied with without contradiction throughout 
 the territory, would be not only outraged but destroyed. 
 
 Our friendship with the English nation is cordial, now that on 
 both sides the best will is being given to overcome those passing 
 difficulties which sometimes arise through the interest of the 
 moment. 
 
 The demarcation of our frontiers with British Guayana goes 
 on. The commissioners are to-day. busy on the outline of the sec- 
 tion of the boundary that requires from them the greatest efforts, 
 inasmuch as they are working in spots unknown and separated 
 from centers of population. Everything, notwithstanding, makes 
 us expect that the work shall be ended at a not distant date. 
 
 One of the members of our commission died lately at the city 
 of Demerara, and the Colonial Government paid honors to his 
 corpse. I have well appreciated this proof of friendship and cour- 
 tesy, undoubtedly arisen from our affectionate correspondence 
 with the United Kingdom. 
 
 27 
 
The British Representative h^s again bf;ought forward the ques- 
 tion of the suppression of the differential duty on merchandise pro- 
 ceeding from the West Indies. For the purpose of arriving at an 
 agreement the English Government have informed us of their 
 willingness to prohibit the exportation of arms from the neighbor- 
 ing island of Trinidad, to co-operate with Venezuela to hinder 
 smuggling, and to take off the duty now imposed on our cattle in 
 that island. In my message of 1902 I spoke to you on this subject 
 whose importance demands your attention. Only Congress can 
 repeal the decree of the 4th of July, 1861, which established the 
 duty in question. 
 
 Our relations with France continue on the harmonious footing 
 on which the}"^ were renewed. The Diplomatic Agent whom the 
 Republic accredited near the French Government was courteously 
 received by the chief of the French nation, to whom our Minister 
 signified the pleasure with which Venezuela would see the mutual 
 currents of sympath}' which exist between the two nations render 
 permanent in our political intercourse that character of complete 
 cerdiality and sincere understanding that it has long demanded. 
 
 The commercial convention with France, approved by you in the 
 year 1902, and which was afterwards ratified and exchanged, is 
 already regulating the mercantile relations of the two Republics 
 and producing excellent results. 
 
 Venezuela has fulfilled the obligations which she undertook by 
 the Paris Protocol of the 19th of February, 1902. In fact a pro- 
 visional certificate for a million bolivars, for the purpose of satis- 
 fying claims for damages suffered by French citizens in the revolu- 
 tion of IQ02, was in due time handed to the French Legation. 
 This certificate will be exchanged for notes of the 3% Diplomatic 
 Debt on the Legation knowing the sum assigned by the French 
 Government to each claimant. The sums which the Franco-Vene- 
 zuelan Mixed Commission, organized pursuant to the said Protocol 
 o'f 1902, recognized in favor of some of those who made claims 
 against the Republic have also been delivered to the Legation, in 
 scrip of the same debt. I cannot yet give you an account of the 
 total amount which A'^enezuela will have to pay to the French Re- 
 public for its nationals, for the persons who had been appointed as 
 
umpires of t% s^jA Cqmmigs^qn, eight claims amounting to B 
 42,988,047.50 still reniaiji pending. 
 
 Frpni the time of their renewal our relations with Germany have 
 been receiving all the interest which they deserve. Both nations 
 ppssjEss in Venezuela important motives of concord, and their sons, 
 who have been long establjshed in the country, have always had all 
 kinds of facilities amongst us. I think we should not economize 
 our efforts to attract to our shores sound ethnical elements of those 
 nationalities, who on mixing with their already domiciled com- 
 patriots, come under the shelter of our laws, to devote themselves to 
 fruitful work to their own advantage and that of the country which 
 receives them with a good will. 
 
 During the past year we had to lament an incident which took 
 place in our relations with Spain, occasioned by the conduct of a 
 consular functionary of that nation. In view of the offence com- 
 mitted against the civil jurisdiction of the Republic, the Govern- 
 ment could only exercise the faculty which it had, to withdraw, in 
 cases of the like nature, the exequatur which had been granted to 
 the Consul. Our sentiments towards Spain are not unknown. The 
 Republic highly esteems the friendship of the mother country, and 
 has with solicitous interest, shown on different occasions, its firm 
 wish to nullify the means which conduce to their drawing nearer 
 to. each other in an affectionate and permanent' manner. 
 
 Venezuela was represented by one of our physicians at the first 
 assembly of the Spanish-American Medical Union, whose labors 
 aim to make closer, by means of the intercourse of scientific men, 
 the lovely bonds that joins Spain and Latin America. It was 
 grateful and creditable for us that that learned corporation, under 
 proposal of a distinguished Spanish physician, would resolve the 
 erection at this capital of a monument consecrated to the memory 
 of Doctor Don Francisco Javier de Balmis, introducer of the 
 vaccine virus in America. 
 
 We have continued to treat with the Governments of Holland 
 and Belgium in the most friendly manner, and the Honorable Rep- 
 resentatives of those States in Venezuela, contribute to the perma- 
 nence of that pleasing situation. It was lately resolved to accredit 
 to the latter of these nations a diplomatic representative with the 
 character of Minister Resident. The person nominated to that 
 
 29 
 
post will shortly present his Letters of Credence and we have inti- 
 mated this to the Bfilgian Legation at Caracas. 
 
 His Holiness Pius X. deigned to impart to me his exaltation to 
 the Pontifical See, and in the answer I gave him I did not omit 
 laying the intense gratification with which the Government of the 
 Republic received the intelligence of his election, and also the 
 rejoicing with which we have followed the beginnings of his 
 Pontificate. 
 
 In order to make more evident the friendly zeal of the Republic 
 in his dealings with the Holy See, it was considered timely to 
 accredit, as it was done, a first-class Legation before the Vatican. 
 
 Our relations with the United States are perfectly harmonious 
 and cordial and the marks of deference shown us by that great 
 nation daily make them more frank and friendly. We must remem- 
 ber as a proof of that harmony and cordiality the interest which 
 the President and people of the American Union exhibited towards 
 Venezuela in the principal days of the international conflict. The 
 good offices of the first IMagistrate of that friendly nation were 
 more than once interposed to obtain a pacific solution of the matter, 
 exempt from the proceedings which were then proudly being taken 
 against us. 
 
 With the object of signifying to the people of the great Republic 
 the gratitude of Venezuela for its friendly proceeding, and also 
 with the purpose of rendering our political relations firmer, it was 
 resolved last year to re-establish the Venezuelan Legation at Wash- 
 ington. The compatriot whom the Government named as chief of 
 that office received a courteous welcome from the President of the 
 United States, as you can see from the speeches delivered on our 
 Minister presenting his Letters of Credence. 
 
 Like our Legation in Washington, the Diplomatic Representa- 
 tive whom the American Government has in A^enezuela, devotes his 
 attention to the maintenance and development of the good under- 
 standing which, happily, exists between the two States. 
 
 Our Republic having been invited in many occasions to attend 
 the Exhibition that the United States are preparing to celebrate 
 the anniversary of the acquisition of the old Territory of Louisiana, 
 our participation in that Exhibition was lately decided, as a proof 
 
 30 
 
of the estceni we entertain towards- that friendly people. Said 
 participation, consonant with the present situation of the Republic, 
 owing to powerful motives, is not to be so important as we would 
 have desired. 
 
 Venezuela keeps friendly intercourse with the Republic of Chile 
 by means of the Legation which that sister nation has established 
 with us. The distinguished diplomatic in charge of this Legation 
 came back to Caracas some months ago, and I have been enabled 
 once more to take notice of his sentiments and those of his Gov- 
 ernment in favor of the progress of Venezuela. I have always 
 tried to return so expressive proofs of esteem by reminding the 
 representative of the intelligent Chilean nation of the sincere 
 desires of Venezuela for the greatest happiness and prosperity of 
 his country. 
 
 The circumstances of having established the Argentine Republic 
 in Venezuela a General Consulate has been a propitious oppor- 
 tunity to express our admiration for this great people, that after 
 having gone through painful epochs of turbulence and blood, has 
 been able to resort to the ample home of civilization, by the intelli- 
 gence and patriotic sense of its statesmen, realizing in a few years 
 wonderful progress, and offering to us sons of the convulsive 
 tropic an example of powerful eloquence. I consign here the vow 
 I make for the uninterrupted aggrandizement of the great country 
 oi San Martin. 
 
 The Dominican Republic keeps its Legation in Caracas, and we 
 liave known with regret of the revolutionary occurrence evolving 
 in that country since some months. God grant that peace may 
 prevail soon again in that friendly country. 
 
 I very much desire that prosperity may reign in Nicaragua, a 
 friendly and brotherly country. I had followed with the greatest 
 interest the probabilities that, by a colossal enterprise contrived 
 hy a great financial power, that Republic might reach the benefits 
 it deserves ; and the Nicaraguan people and its enlightened Gov- 
 ernment are acquainted with this fraternal interest. 
 
 The Honorable Don Pedro Jose Escalon deigned to mform me 
 of his election as Constitutional President of the Republic of Sal- 
 ■vador, which office he commenced to perform on the first of March 
 of last year. In my answer to his letter I expressed my wishes 
 
 31 
 
of the continuance in the intercourse betweeii the two Republics 
 of the sam^ cordiality th^t has always charapterized it. 
 
 I received the s^me information from the Honorable Don Jose 
 Battle y Ordines, who was called, by the vote of the General As- 
 sembly of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, to rule the destinies 
 of that friendly country, whose well-being and progress I wish 
 with the greatest sincerity. 
 
 At the end of the presidential period for which Honorable Doc- 
 tor M. Ferrera de Salles was elected. Honorable Doctor Francisco 
 de Paula Rodrigugs Alves assumed the Constitutional Presidency 
 of the United States of Brazil. I answered with great satisfaction 
 the letter of the new Magistrate, and in reference to the purpose 
 that he exhibits of tightening the friendship existing betwe;en the 
 two countries, I made known to him with pleasure that those pur- 
 poses would find in me effective and decided assistance to corre- 
 spond, as much to the sentiments of the nation, as -to my personal 
 aspirations. 
 
 On the first of February of last jear Honorable General Manuel 
 Bonilla assumed the exercise of the supreme power of the Re- 
 public of Honduras, which information he imparted to me in his 
 letter of June gth of the same year. I addressed a short time after 
 to the new President of said Republic with which we wish to 
 tighten the existing relations, my congratulations for the proof of 
 confidence his fellow-citizens have given to him. 
 
 The Republic of Peru elected in the last months of the past year, 
 according to its Constitution, the Honorable Don Manuel Candamo 
 as its President, who made me known his designation in a very 
 estimable letter. I immediately answered him, expressing the 
 hope that during his administration the cordial relations which 
 happily join us shall be increased. 
 
 .An occurrence of much gravity and of unquestionable trans- 
 cendancy happened recently in Spanish America; the Colombian 
 Department of Panama has segregated from the Republic of 
 Colombia and constituted an independent nation. 
 
 In the respective report )ou will find the notes that the Provis- 
 ional Government of the new State has addressed to us, and my 
 answer of February the third. 
 
 That movement has a great significance in Amei:ican politics,' 
 
 32 
 
atid has been for hi6 a motive of serious reflfections. The fact that 
 the citizens of the Isthmus have iitiahimously determined, as the 
 Provisional Government announces, its erection in an independent 
 sovereignty, is of great eloqillfnce for those that are able to follow 
 in history the march and interlocking of events, the concentration 
 of ideas and facts and the consequences of both, across time and 
 through the dark and partial contingencies of the mistakes and 
 passionate aberrations of men. The independence of Panama is 
 the tacit sanctions of the forecasts of the Father of Colombia. In 
 the future development of the creation of that mass who nourished 
 with the truth and the unavoidable laws of history, the great 
 visions that his soul commissioned his genius to realize, he had 
 assigned to Panama a place of superior and decisive pre-eminence ; 
 imfortunately, the Isthmus did not arrive to it by the route that 
 JJolivar marked out, but by the permanent deviations of intelli- 
 gence and foresight in our races. Panama did not arrive to fulfil 
 its natural destiny with the logic of greatness conceived by the 
 Liberator, but by the painful process of disintegration — but arrived. 
 
 The new Republic has been recognized by many nations, and 
 Venezuela did not refuse to give it a friendly word. Department 
 or Republic. Panama is our brother, represents a familiar entity in 
 our history, a sparkle of the nimbus of the great Colombia, a name 
 very much attached to what we love the most as men of thought, 
 and we venerate the most as patriots. 
 
 For my part, I believe in justice, and accept it and respect it 
 with all its consequences, so I cannot dodge my sympathy to the 
 new nation, and from here I send my greetings to its flag, with my 
 wishes of well-being and progress. 
 
 The state of our treasury, and the necessity to attend to urgent 
 and unforeseen obligations, have made it impossible to re-estab- 
 lish completely the payment of what we owe by reason of diplo- 
 matic agreements. At present, everything augurs prosperity and 
 success of th« Republic, so that we will soon be able to fulfil 
 strictly our obligations. 
 
 With the alluring outlook that the state of our international 
 relations presents to-day we can well devote ourselves to the neces- 
 sary and grateful labor of invigorating and extending themj ir; 
 order that sheltered in the interior by peace, and outward by 
 
 33 
 
respect, we shall be able to realize without impediment the high 
 ends of the welfare of the nation. 
 
 TREASURY. - 
 
 The fiscal report is to be short, but eloquent. I present to you 
 here in summary extracts some data that you will find amplified 
 and in minutely precise details in the respective report. 
 
 In virtue of the authorization which Congress bestowed upon 
 the National Executive in its Decree of April ii, 1903, I ordered 
 on :Ma}- 8th of the same year the coining of B. 4,000,000 silver b>- 
 the Philadelphia mint (one Bolivar is equivalent to one franc). 
 
 Of these, three million bolivars had arrived at the Custom House 
 at La Guayra up to the 31st of December, and in January arrived 
 the rest of the coinage, one million bolivars. The total cost of this 
 silver and its coinage was B. 1,383,216.06. 
 
 The salt mines of the Republic produced in the economic year 
 ended June 30, 1903, the amount of B. 1,478,653.92. This yield is 
 almost 50 per cent, of what the same branch produced in the pre- 
 vious year, but such a decrease is natural and even small, if we con^ 
 sider the period in which it was accomplished. 
 
 The paralyzation of the account of Titles of Salt Mines was 
 absolute imtil the month of August, in which the Government 
 resolved to apply to its pavment all the receipts since that month ; 
 with that application and the amoimts credited for transfer of the 
 contribution of war, we have verified until to-day seventeen draw- 
 ings that reduce the balance of the account to B. 3,050,500. 
 
 The blockade converted the salt in a precious article attractive 
 to speculators, so that after a few days the merchants had made 
 it rise to B180 the fanega (x). 
 
 I could not remain impassible in the presence of such a scan- 
 dal, the odious and cruel monopoly of an article of unavoidable 
 necessity, which cast a new misfortune to the people, the first 
 victim of such mischievousness ; in consequence, I ordered the 
 immediate exploitation of the salt mines of Guaiguaza for ac- 
 count of the Government, and the establishment of salt stores 
 in Caracas, Puerto Cabello, Valencia, Cagua, Cuidad de Cura 
 and La Victoria, in order that the sale might continue for equi- 
 table prices. In this way the Government frustrated the spec- 
 
 34 
 
tacular tendency, and at the same time opened a .source, of 
 receipts, modest but opportune, to help its many necessities. 
 
 This exploitation lasted for three months, and the pulling out 
 of 2,826 fanegas, which was its work, was made with B4239, at 
 the price of B. 1.50 fanega, agreed with the owners of the salt 
 mines. 
 
 The immobility of the account of the Titles of i per cent, has 
 produced an increase in it. The stock in circulation is B. 3,360,-- 
 596.13, to which amount the interests, up to the 31st of last De- 
 cember, footing B. 2,250,781.44, has been added. The balance 
 of this account up to that date is consequently B. 5,611,377.56. 
 
 As you will see in the report, the stock of sealed paper on the 
 1st of January of this year was B. 546,144. 
 
 As the entrance fees of the custom houses of La Guayra and 
 Puerto Cabello were encumbered with the 30 per cent, com- 
 promised by the protocols of Washington, the Government was 
 obliged to establish the Extraordinary Contribution of War by 
 the Decree that you will see in the respective report B. 9,760,- 
 172.50 were produced by this tax, which was necessary to avoid 
 the financial disaster of the Government in such critical circum- 
 stances as those of the last times ; and in behalf of that receipt 
 we were able to attend to imperious obligations, the gravity and 
 urgency of which you will know' by the specifications of the 
 report. 
 
 In the complete disorder to which the war brought the Re- 
 public, and in the straitness to which the Administration was 
 submitted, it was necessary to interrupt the payment of the legal 
 allowance of the States ; and according as the nation recovered, 
 I have been disposing the gradual re-establishment of those 
 expenses, until its realization, which has been made since the 
 last months of last year, in the amounts and conditions pre- 
 scribed by the Executive Decree of April 25, 1901. By this re- 
 spect, the National Treasury has paid B. 1,435,272.16. 
 
 On the 31st December, 1902, the balance of the account of the 
 Government with the Bank of Venezuela was of B. 10,495,193.89 
 against the Government. That balance was in December 3rst, 
 1903, B. 3,215,992.61, and we have continued paying it, so that 
 at this date it is reduced to less than 1.500,000 bolivars. 
 
 35 
 
With charge to the branches of the Public service and ex- 
 penses of the war, we have niade the following payJiieilts' : 
 Repairs of the vessels of the Na^y, nialtefills for 
 telegraph, elements of war, land arid sea Si'til- 
 
 lery, coal, etc B1.910.137.42 
 
 Balance and interests, of the price of the steamer 
 
 "Augusto," to-day Zumbad6r i7'8,333-33 
 
 Settlements for balances of credits agaifist the 
 nation, of Messrs. A. Luisi, Bldhm & Co., 
 Victor Grassus, J. B. Matharan, H. L. Boulton 
 & Co., and Pedro Stufap, representative of 
 
 Th. Gibbs 136J804.42 
 
 Price of a house for barracks in La VictiDria. . . . 12,000.00 
 
 Postal debt 20,722.40 
 
 Furniture for the church of La Pastora 4,834.41 
 
 Musical instruments for San Cristobal 533-15 
 
 Credited on account of the credits of the Com- 
 missions of limits with Colombia and British 
 
 Guiana 172,511.92 
 
 Fleets and passages for the railways of the Re- 
 public and for the corporation of the port of 
 
 La Guayra 472,581.64 
 
 Exposition of St. Louis 13,600.00 
 
 Medicines, artificial members and surgery instru- 
 ments for the hospitals and for the army 112,722.83 
 
 Forty-five thousand nine hundred and thirty- 
 eight equipments. Kepis, hats, blankets, steel 
 arms, shoes and uniforrns for the National 
 Army 882,379.25 
 
 ^3^17.160.77 
 Resuming, I present to you here the following tables of the 
 general irioveriient of the revenue from the 1st of January to the 
 31st Decerriber, i9tJ3: 
 
 ENTRAlSreE 
 
 Maritime duties Bii,l'02,827.53 
 
 Tax on transit 5,731,2912.66 
 
 Transfer of the account of salt rnihes ■. 1,3'i 8,61 5.68 
 
 36 
 
Transfer of the account loan of 1903 341,266.56 
 
 Coining of silver 3,000,000.00 
 
 Several 3,000,410.25 
 
 634,494,412.08 
 
 EXPENSE. 
 
 Public service 610,316,619.02 
 
 Expense of war '. . . 10,962,628.63 
 
 Income of the States 1,435,272.16 
 
 Expenses for the coining of silver, including ten 
 
 pairs of dies i ,386,752.06 
 
 Transfer to different accounts 259,153.95 
 
 Public works i, 1005070.77 
 
 Pubhc instruction 705,917.99 
 
 Transferred to Messrs. H. L. Boulton & Co. for 
 the 30 per cent, of the Custom House collec- 
 tion at La Guayra and Puerto Cabello, accord- 
 ing to the protocols of Washington 4,183,804.98 
 
 To the Bank of Venezuela 3,979,201.29 
 
 Cash in Treasury on the 31st December 164,991.32 
 
 634,494,413.08 
 We have in the Bank of Venezuela a stock in postage stamps 
 amounting to B. i9,595.232.55- 
 
 The stock of salt-policies is up to date for value of B. 4,892,- 
 765, according to the demonstration that you will find in the re- 
 spective report, where you will also see the movement of Bills 
 of Navigation and the Statistics of- National Properties and of 
 Exportation and Importation. 
 The account of the Debts of the Republic is as follows : 
 
 Internal debt 670,130,422.04 
 
 Pending interests 22,852,666.63 
 
 692,983,088.67 
 
 External debt 6125,363,494.86 
 
 Pending interests 26,281,926.22 
 
 6151,645,421.08 
 37 
 
Total amounts : 
 
 Titles of debt 6195.493,916.90 
 
 Interests 49,134,592.7s 
 
 3.244,628,509.85 
 
 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 The service of Post Offices and Telegraphs works correctlv. 
 The Government has endeavored to carry these branches of the 
 Admmistration to its best efficiency, and the Republic can be 
 satisfied that, if in the short time tlrat Jias been allowed to me, 
 to devote myself to the reconstruction and ftre tempests which 
 blew on it the breath of disaster, I have already succeeded in 
 reorganizing such important branches of the service, placing 
 them in conditions of indefinitely advancing at the step of prog- 
 ress, when public order in all its manifestations shall be consoli- 
 dated we shall be able to be proud of having a civilized country, 
 where life may not offer anxieties, nor difficulties to labor in its 
 amplest development, nor to the social mechanism in the solicita- 
 tion of its destinies, that may well be great and glorious if we 
 apply to them intelligence, patriotism and good sense. 
 
 Twenty-six principal post offices and one hundred and eighty- 
 five branches are in the country, and for its support in the first 
 economic six months B. 49,582.18 have been spent, without 
 reckoning some late important expenses, of which I shall men- 
 tion those occasioned by the installation of Helios apparatus to 
 disinfect the correspondence in Caracas, La Guayra, Puerto Ca- 
 bello and Carupano, which are the four central offices of dis- 
 patch. This precaution, and some others were taken by the 
 awful emergency of the plague in Marseille and the menace of 
 invasion through the Pacific of the same calamity. 
 
 Wishing to provide the press so necessary an element to life 
 and intelligence in these times — with the greatest advantages and 
 franchises, I disposed to establish in the General Direction, a 
 specially destined service for the dispatch of the newspapers to 
 the interior of the Republic. The postal interview movement 
 cost in the period named B. 438,242. 
 
 We have a lawsuit with the Post master of Trinidad for that 
 
 38 
 
post-office haying accepted in the postal exchange illegitimate 
 stamps used by the revolntionarks of Guayana. The digtiity of 
 the Republic and the honor of the Government in the matter 
 have been actively and energetically defended, the colonial office 
 having declared for our satisfaction, that when the fact went to 
 its knowledge, the correspondence was considered not prepaid. 
 This business, as the others which are connected with the respect 
 that we owe to the country and ought to require. from all in its 
 behalf, will be conducted — rely on it — by the high notion of 
 patriotism that the Government has. 
 
 • The contract made for the collection of the sale of postage 
 stamps has been producing foreseen results. In the three years 
 previous to its celebration, that is, 1898, 1899 and 1900, that sale 
 produced an average of B. 905,500, and that this average raised 
 to B. 1,961,000 in the following years of 1901, 1902 and 1903, 
 which, as you know, brought with them an abundant provision of 
 catastrophes. 
 
 The telegraphic lines have 6,480 kilometers, and its estimate 
 has been in the year B. 1,210,014.62 — 129 offices are at present 
 working, including those of Santa Ana del Tachira and Ureva, 
 of recent creation, with its lines of concession already built. The 
 importations of materials made directly by the same direction of 
 the branch, without counting those that the Minister of the 
 Treasury details in its report, foot up B. 51,122. 
 
 The telegraph produced in tlMfee economic quarters, placed in 
 the account the last days of the war, B. 124,985.35, and the Gov- 
 ernment has paid for its cablegram B. 13,442.08. 
 
 Observed by the Government and categorically denounced by 
 the Chamber of Commerce the precarious service of the French 
 Cable, owing to frequent interruptions in the line, the Attorney- 
 General has received orders to ask before the High Federal 
 Court the rescission of the agreement made with said Company, 
 in order to solicit, in more advantageous conditions for the public 
 and for the Government, the reinstalment of the wire which 
 should conjoin us in a more stable, rapid and equitable way with 
 the foreign world. 
 
 I have disposed the construction of two cables, one between 
 the Puertos de Altagracia and Bella Vista, Maracaibo, and the 
 
 39 
 
other between Cindad Balivar and Soledad, the sum of B. 24,- 
 934.6o'was assigned for these cables which shall undoubtedly 
 render great benefits to the general interests of those districts. 
 
 The instalment of the official telephonic system with 66 appa- 
 ratus costs to the Government B. 32,297.67, and works in 207 
 kilometers; 92 foreigns and 125 urbans. It is superfluous to 
 extol the advantages that render to the service this prodigious 
 electrical handiwork, the application of which in its own lines 
 the Government is extending every time more for the best effi- 
 ciency of the official determinations. 
 
 I think always on the organization of statistics. Convinced of 
 the great importance that has that administrative branch in the 
 government and progress of the peoples, I endeavor to make it 
 between us a possible perfection, and I think that during the 
 short time of order, in which we have been able to give to it, is 
 already producing its fruits, of which the first and not less im- 
 portant is having enforced in many authorities, generally refrac- 
 tory before, the interest and probity which the punctual and 
 conscientious compilation of data requires. 
 
 I must remind you that since 1891 no census of the nation has 
 been made. 
 
 I have decreed the Code of Mines; it belongs to precepts to 
 establish the jurisprudence that should rule in this matter de- 
 signed to produce so many increments and benefits to the Re- 
 public with the scientific and productive mobilization of its sub- 
 terranean riches, guaranteeing the efiforts of the laborer and 
 the security of the property. 
 
 Eleven definite titles of mines were issued during this year : 
 5 of asphalt, 3 of coal and 3 of copper ; and 7 adjudications of 
 lands for breeding cattle, one of them gratuitous. The mining 
 taxes came up to B. 6,636.12, and the value received for the 
 waste land B. 2,906.73. 
 
 The Government has made in the course of the report three 
 stipulations which I consider profitable to the Republic ; the ad- 
 ministration and colonization of the Island Tortuga and those of 
 the group called Los Roques for fifteen years ; to establish a 
 paper factory for twenty-five years ; and the auction for B. 72,000 
 per year of the tax on the fishing of pearls, which had produced 
 
 40 
 
to the National Treasurj', until the celebration of said contract, 
 B. 52,110. That industry was carefully regulated, and its ex- 
 portation, scientific as it is and ought to be, shall render great 
 benefits to the privileged Neo-Spartan region. 
 
 The Government declared the caducity of 338 mine conces- 
 sions and 17 mine contracts, because the legal statutes had not 
 been executed ; of two emphyteutic contracts ; of one for the 
 exploitation of natural lands on the borders of the rivers Paci- 
 moni and Baria ; of another for the exploitation and seeding of 
 India rubber and gutta-percha on the Zulia, another for the ex- 
 ploitation and cultivation of Los Roques. In this matter the 
 Government has been severe, and intends to continue so, in order 
 to put an end to the old tendency of asking contracts to the Gov- 
 ernment with purposes of transient and perhaps not very hcit 
 speculation, without thinking to execute them nor produce to the 
 Republic the natural yield of its unexploited riches. 
 
 There were issued nine patents of invention, five to natives 
 that were exonerated from the payment of the respective duties, 
 and four that paid B. 2500; and official protection has been al- 
 lowed to five trade-marks and nineteen factory marks. 
 
 We have devoted special attention and effective activity to' 
 works of public utility and improvement. 
 
 The Central Univ^ersity was repaired, rebuilt the penitentiary 
 fortresses of the West and Centre and the Academy of Fine Arts ; 
 edified the Military Command of the Federal District, macadam- 
 ized the avenue of Paradise, the bridge Regeneration and some 
 other streets set up, the piping that carries water to the plain of 
 Cajigal Hill, where the building of the Military Academy, de- 
 creed and appraised in B. 1,278,000 more or less, has been com- 
 menced; the road from Santa Lucia to Altagracia de Orituco 
 has been reopened, and a reproduction of the picture of the 
 Battle of Jumin has been made. 
 
 The aqueducts of Independencia, Juan Griego,^Porlamar and 
 Valera are in construction, and some modifications are being 
 made to the one of El Valle ; the building for a first-class college 
 in Independencia, the Government house of San Cristobal, the 
 bridge Rest^uracion in Valencia and another oh the river Quini- 
 mari ; the highroads from Puerto Cabello to San Felipe and from 
 
 41 
 
Merida to Palniarito, the statue of Colon for the boulevard 
 Macuro and the one of the brave Paez, equestrian and in native 
 dress, to make more vivid and graphic the reminding of his ex- 
 ploits in the fight for the country. 
 
 We have repaired the buildings of Foreign Affairs, Public 
 Works, Improvements, National Printing Office and Park; the 
 old Military Command of the Federal District, the barracks of 
 San Mauricio and El Hoyo at Caracas, Anzoategui at Valecia 
 and the one of Maracay ; the Panteon, the Academies of History 
 and Language, the Alms House, the Insane Asylum of Catia, 
 the Military Hospital and the Public Prison ; the street of La 
 Victoria and Valencia, the castles of San Carlos and the Light 
 House at La Guayra and the fort Solano at Puerto Cabello ; the 
 parlors of the Federal Palace, the Municipal Theatre, the Bridge 
 of Paradise, the sidewalks of the square of La Pastora, the tunnel 
 of Calvario, the iron bridge Regeneracion, the Plaza Bolivar of 
 Independencia, the highroads from Caracas to La Guayra, from 
 the south, from the west, and the road from Ocumare del Tuy 
 to Camatagua. 
 
 I have helped Guarenas, Charallave, Guatireand Los Teques, 
 -for their urban improvement, with amount very inferior to my 
 wish of favoring these laborious populations. 
 
 Agreements have already been made for the very important 
 works of the Piers of Carupano, a railroad In the Yuruary terri- 
 tory, and the canalization of the river Tuy and its affluents ; and 
 they are in way of construction, after reflective studies, the 
 custom houses of Macuro and Tucacas, works of incalculable 
 profit for meritorious regions of the country. 
 
 I do not doubt that you will see, in considering these works, 
 the good will that has presided in the Administration, when we 
 have undertaken and realized them in moments so full of an- 
 guish for the Treasury, and so abundant in other attentions, so 
 much more exacting as they were profoundly painful. 
 
 The public works in exploitation are the following : the .waters 
 of Caracas, the aqueducts of Valencia, Guanare and Coro, the 
 railyaws to La Guayra and Valencia, from Valencia to Puerto 
 Cabello, that of Bolivar, that from La Vela to Coro ; those of 
 La Ceiba and of Tachira, that from the south, the Central of 
 
 42 
 
Venezuela and the one- from Maiquetia to Macuto, the railway 
 and the mmes of Guanta, the ports of La Guayra and La Cei(ia 
 and the piers of Puerto Cabello, La Ceiba and Cumerebo, jnd 
 the aerial cable of the sulphur mines of the district of Benitez to 
 Carupano. 
 
 WAR AND NAVY. 
 
 I have decreed the Military and War Navy Codes to substitute ; 
 the first, the one that is in force since 1882, and the second, the 
 General Ordinances of the Spanish Navy of 1793, with the ex- 
 ception of the Title VIL, Treatise V., in reference to ports and 
 havens ; so that this Code of War Navy is the first that has been 
 enacted in Venezuela. 
 
 I have not to enhance the huge meaning of arms in the devel- 
 opment of national life, which is of categoric evidence. And I am 
 convinced that if Venezuela had formed the army since it was 
 needed, upon the scientific and truly institutional basis which 
 requires to fulfil the high ends belonging to it in the universal life 
 of nations, we could offer to civilization a more fruitful, more 
 honorable and surely more illustrious history ! Uprisings mis- 
 guided in the madness of ambition would not have had the sup- 
 port of sword, as we have seen it a number of times ; the sabre 
 wovtld not have wounded, as we have witnessed in many occa- 
 sions, the majesty of laws ; the Power, as almost always has done, 
 would not have brandished the steel which carries stamped upon 
 it the blazon of the Republic, to shift the country from its pros- 
 perous and perhaps glorious course, and lastly, we would not 
 liave been present, in different epochs, to the pitiful spectacle of 
 the mean cutlass, guilty of all barbarisms — lifting itself up threat- 
 ening over the forehead of intimidated society, making shrink 
 back and wither, like sensitive plants, right and culture, which 
 ■do not live of bloodshed in demagogic insanity, but of the beauti- 
 ful labor of thought, of the generous activity of ideas, when they, 
 themselves, do not imperiously consecrate, as in the great politi- 
 cal and social transformations, the baptism of sorrow, the re- 
 demption of holocaust, whence those two lofty pre-eminences of 
 human soul corhe forth ; in the same manner as in the tempestu- 
 
 43 
 
ous period of stubborn and bloody struggle that the Liberal Res- 
 toration has so gloriously ended. 
 
 Because, if the urgent needs of pubhc health, if the fixed 
 thought to save the country which tyrannized any mind, if the 
 high, sublime ideal of national rehabilitation, which raised my 
 spirit towards that radiant Tabor, that in all times of history is 
 the critical point of the new life of a people ; placed in my hand 
 the sword of Revolution, of this revolution which I have been 
 realizing until I have crowned it with the noisy and definitive 
 chastisement imposed to militarism in fields of blood, and to the 
 old speculators with imperishable examples of abnegation and 
 moral energy; if this egregious patriotic Cause armed my hand 
 with the sword of battles, and the stupid resistance of old cor- 
 ruptions has sowed the territory of the Republic with deep fur- 
 rows of devastation and signs of mourning, it is because in the 
 mysterious deliberation of the destinies of the country, this 
 frightful epoch has been the happy gestation, whose dawn we all 
 can see advancing in the serene horizon. And inasmuch as the 
 martial courage of our countrymen, and the consequent misuse 
 of arms, arbitrarily or capriciously grasped under the impulse 
 of savage impetuosity or grim machinations, have filled up our 
 annals with shame and spread sufiferings and misery in our life, 
 whose same arms, converted by the efficacy of the restorer ideal 
 in palladium of progress, of order, and of the consolidation of re- 
 deeming institutions, shall henceforth be one of the most perfect 
 agents of the future. And it is not only as an imposition of my 
 public duty, but as a result of my experience and profound con- 
 viction that I need to endeavor to make the national army and 
 navy institutions of scientific basis and expansive activity flatter- 
 ing to the culture of an intelligent people and to the seriousness 
 of a respectable nation. 
 
 This is an affair which claims the attention of rudimentarily 
 discreet persons, but it has also been adverse by its own nature 
 to the comrtion forecast of the politicians by trade in our democ- 
 racy, till now fickle and convulsive enough, and this is the reason 
 why I. have found the military notions of my country after a cen- 
 tury of warlike exercise, very far behind the glorious essays 
 realized by our liberators. 
 
 44 
 
It is thus my purpose to go on studying all that appertains to 
 sueh an important matter, to go setting at work the plans of 
 modification, already foreseen in the Government's criterion, 
 which commence with the institution of the Military Academy, 
 that I have decreed, and is presently in execution, and of which 
 I wish to give you an idea in the copies of the plan that gained 
 prizes which I embody in this message as an appendix. 
 
 PUBLIC INSTRUCTION. 
 
 When a statesman, sincere, and wishing to do good and to 
 contribute to the greatness of his country, thinks about the 
 branch of Government that attends to the Public Instruction, he 
 will necessarily experience the attraction of the future, which 
 raises his spirit in a dream of glory, because no other matter of 
 the Government of peoples carries within itself an importance so 
 positive, so intrinsic and so fruitful -in profits or remote conse- 
 quences. So that you, appreciating with fairness the good inten- 
 tion, and the probity and conscience with which I try to fulfil the 
 high duties that the nation has pointed out to me, will be able 
 to suppose the disappointment of my spirit and the profound 
 pain of my heart, seeing my activity restricted and all the pref- 
 erence of my attention given to the fighting and sorrowful part 
 of my civilizing commission, feeling myself obliged to put a gun 
 in the hands of men and lead them along to the triumphs of war, 
 instead of a book, a tool of work or an instrument of art, to carry 
 him to crop the rich vintages of pea-ce, which is my ideal inspira- 
 tion ! 
 
 Nevertheless, I have profited by the incipient normality to 
 begin to impulse the vast gear of Instruction. Thq National 
 Colleges of male and female in all the States of the Republic 
 have been already reinstalled, immediately endowing them with 
 proper personal and estimations corresponding to their cate- 
 gory- 
 
 I have been assiduously occupied in the preparation of the 
 new Code of this branch, and it is not useless to consign here 
 some observations, which are the notorious result of the de- 
 :ficiencies of all our laws. I have meditated a great deal on this 
 perversion of the dominant criterion in our history, on this juri- 
 
 45 
 
dically morbid inclination to mislead the legislation into incon- 
 sistent, inapplicable and almost purely metaphysical theories, 
 that do not produce practical advantages to the life and improve- 
 ment of the Nation, and scarcely place the shain-patnot's -propa- 
 gandists in aptitude to speak of our very- advanced and -liberal 
 legislation, when the national mass vegetates in shadow and 
 anxiety, lost its way of the courses of intellectual- life and those 
 likewise of the redeeming labor, theories that have the appear- 
 ances of white water lilies, beautiful flowers which float embel- 
 lishing the surface and charming the eyes, when below reigns 
 silence and the mortal repose of the dark stagnant waters. 
 
 What do they learn in Venezuela? The young people, full of 
 enthusiasm and love, run to the teaching institutes to provide . 
 themselves with the intellectual elements necessary to the Strug-'. 
 gle of life and to the robust and impulsive tendency, in all men 
 of some elevation, of themselves shining and making their coun- 
 try shine, and those teaching Institutes offer to them, after long 
 years of barren studies, a scholastic erudition of old things, ana- 
 chronistic in the epoch, superior or perhaps inferior — to the level 
 of ordinary life, wisdom of infolios abundant in abstract specu- 
 lations, which modern intelligence devotes only to the great 
 transcendental speculators, founders of systems and renovators 
 of the intellectual middle, and natural!}' strange for its own con- 
 dition of archaisms, to the newly arrived people, for whom it is 
 sufficient to labor the ground cleared by the old, and crop the 
 yield of their own particular efforts. 
 
 Mediaeval viciousness that" has subsisted in history, and check's 
 still the development of many people, we ought to remove them' 
 to leave expeditious our route to the future ; and for this reason 
 I excite ypu. Citizen Legislators, to deliberate on such an arduou's- 
 and transcendental matter, while I for my part commence to put 
 the. bases of the reform in the Code that I have dictated. 
 
 The plan and method of this Code are undubitably superior to 
 those of the former. As the matters are distributed in seperated 
 laws, it is possible to introduce in it the improvements which the 
 future may go on imposing, without making necessary a derog- 
 atory proceeding that our laws have so much discredited to us.. 
 
 We have given cardinal amplitude to Primary Instruction, 
 establishing it obligatory in the first degree, sanctioning thus 
 
 46 
 
what a great and beautiful intelligence called the right of the 
 child, which is mixed up with the right of the State, so that in a 
 little time everybody in Venezuela will know how to read and 
 write; and in the second degree, voluntary and gratuitous, in 
 order that the citizens, with the facilities there established, may 
 obtain the knowledge they will need for common activity and 
 energy. 
 
 Only two universities will subsist, ruled by rectors and ad- 
 visory boards, the Central in Caracas and the Western in 
 Merida, which are sufficient for the necessities of the country. 
 These institutes are organized in accordance with the last prog- 
 ress of science, and are the only teaching centres authorized to 
 confer titles. The habilitation of studies and the etiquettes of 
 the Universities have been conveniently regulated. 
 
 The Secondary Instruction, Pedagogic and of Philosophy jnd 
 Letters, will be granted in Normal .Schools and Colleges. The 
 Normal Schools are lour, for the formation of teachers ; and in 
 the Colleges we have divided the teaching in two courses, one of 
 Secondary or preparatory instruction and the other of Philoso- 
 phy and Letters. Of these Colleges there will be one at least 
 for each sex in the Capitols of the States, and four in the Federal 
 District. The women will not have classes of philosophy, but 
 of matters rhore adequate to their instruction. There are estab- 
 lished in each capital advisory boards to inspect the progress of 
 the establishments of teachings. 
 
 Schools of commerce have been created and will be opened 
 in the cities, where in the judgment of the Executive will be 
 suitable, and those of primary and superior Agronomy, that is 
 to say, practical agriculture and agronomic institutes, have been 
 conveniently radicated. 
 
 The plan of apprenticeship in the Academy of Fine Arts has 
 been much improved. 
 
 Liberty of teaching is consigned in this Code, distinguishing at 
 the same time the rights and duties of the private training 
 schools, and to the Gpyernment is reserved the inspection of 
 scholar discipline, of hygiene (regulated here in a special law) 
 and of the execution of the programmes of studies. 
 
 The Decrees and Resolutions that regulated the movement of 
 
 47 
 
the rents of Instruction and the duties and attributions of Fis- 
 cals are also codified. 
 
 We need at any risk schools of practical industries ; we need 
 teaching of agriculture, of cultivations adapted to each zone of 
 our territory ; of apiculture, of pisciculture, sericulture, of com- 
 merce, of tanneries and dyeing, of extraction and manufacture 
 of fibers which we so abundanttly have, of woolen industries, of 
 feculency, of veterinary, of zootechnics, of caseous industries 
 for the fabrication of butter and cheese, of salting of meats, of 
 fishery, minery, navigation, distillery, refinery, and many other 
 branches of modern production, which change the face of na- 
 tions, and raise them to riches, power and happiness. A \\'ork- 
 man, an artisan, an industrial of free intelligence, of strong and 
 healthy arms, is much more useful to his country than a graduate 
 of a university, faded in study, the magnitude of which escapes 
 perhaps his own comprehension, sunk in misery, professional 
 without clients, who knows of law formulas written in ma uials, 
 but who is always disposed to sacrifice them, in the cruelty of 
 hunger, if not in the ignominy of vice. 
 
 We want thus, to save intellectualism of the dangers that 
 threaten it, to redeem it from misery or from the objection that 
 surrounds it everywhere in our midst, and for this purpose we 
 must open to intelligence all the ways to unfold its activity, in 
 order that the summits of human thought may be exhibited to 
 the generations with the majesty they have, not aspiring to 
 climb to them as the only solution of social destinies, but the 
 vigorous spirits of powerful wings. 
 
 Think over this, Citizen Legislators, and you will think with 
 me in the problem par excellence, which \enezuela offers to-day 
 to the deliberation of its leaders. 
 
 For my part I have already subsidized the Agrarian Institute, 
 a centre from which the Republic can expect benefits. I have 
 ordered the restriction of the faculty of baccalaureate in colleges, 
 to suspend the highest class in two universities and in a college 
 of special category, and to found a veterinary school in the 
 principal city of the southwest plains. Besides, seven hundred 
 primary schools have been opened in the States and in the Fed- 
 eral District, providing them with good and adequate furniture. 
 
 48 
 
In short, I can assure you that this branch of Government has 
 had all my devotion, and that I will not leave our efforts to 
 carry it through the course that laws and great public necessities 
 may show to my patriotism. 
 
 LEGISLATORS. 
 
 I know well, for the attestation of my conscience, that the 
 official word has revindicated tinder the Government of the Res- 
 toration its title of honorability, that never should abandon it 
 and that never will abandon it while it depends upon me ; I know 
 well that the present state of things is not suspected of lying 
 before public opinion — because we have never done it — or of 
 deceiving — because we have never tried to do it ; so that with 
 perfect confidence and without worn-out declamations, I can 
 present in rapid synthesis, in its more salient lines, a short pic- 
 ture of my administrative work of six months, obtaining so the 
 honor to make you see, confirmed by facts, the promises I have 
 made to my fellow-citizens in different solemn opportunities, 
 promises that really were not but the expression of my infran- 
 gible purpose, the voice of hope, clean and unbound from all 
 conventional interest, which my mind that of a sincere and be- 
 lieving patriot presented at the ideal alter of the Republic, when 
 we were besieged by catastrophes, when conflicts came out with 
 despairing, prolonged cruelty, without giving us. time for any 
 other thing, nor permitting us any action that might not be di- 
 rected to conjure them. 
 
 The situation of the country was as difficult as unfortunate on 
 the sad days of February, in which the blockade of our littoral 
 was suspended. 
 
 The threatening international conflict kept up, and the civil 
 war, nourished by the exasperation of hates and badly punished 
 ambitions, devoured the Republic as a conflagration ; the custom 
 houses were closed, our economic resources and the desperate 
 expedients of domestic appeals were consumed, and the Govern- 
 ment was obliged to raise a loan of B. 341,266.56, in the capital, 
 which was subscribed first by Cipriano Castro, to hold out the 
 army, disposed to all kinds of sacrifices, in the rashness of 
 patriotism, to keep up Venezuela independent and undivided, 
 while there was blood in the veins of his sons. 
 
 49 
 
The situation was then very grave. 
 
 With the suspension of the blockade we recovered the custom 
 house revenue, but we could not expect much of its entrances 
 in the anxiety of these circumstances ; aside from this, by the 
 protocols which we signed by that time in Washington we con- 
 tracted peremptory obligations, in virtue of which we were 
 obliged to pay immediately in gold, B. 1,723,765.65 to Germany, 
 B. 169,382.7010 England, and to Italy B. 138,875, while the rest 
 of the claims was submitted in pursuit of equity, to the contra- 
 dictory judgment of the Mixed Commissions, that should soon 
 be installed in this city. I have paid in gold until to-day, by 
 reason of the foreign conflict, the amount of B. 6,658,952.07. 
 
 Besides these enormous and unforseen expenses, I reimbursed 
 on the month of July to the money-lenders the amount of the 
 [February loan, which was a cause of gratitude for us to the 
 citizens who contributed to the service with good will; I re- 
 established the payment of 50 per cent, of the public budget, and 
 25 per cent, of the allowance of the States, which I raised after- 
 wards to 50 per cent., until the month of October, on which I re- 
 established the complete payment of that constitutional obliga- 
 tion. 
 
 I employed in clothing and rations — money for the army and 
 provisions for the park of reserve — B. 995,102.02. 
 
 I spent in the navy B. 2,088,470.75. 
 
 B. 1,543,000.76 have been inverted in public works. 
 
 I have spent B. 1,261,126.62 in repairs, conservation and in- 
 crease of the telegraphic system. 
 
 Besides, two great debts that weighed heavily in the National 
 Rent are almost cancelled ; the credit of the Bank of Venezuela 
 against the Government, which on the month of March amount- 
 ed to more than eleven millions of bolivars, and is reduced to- 
 day, by our payments, to one million, and the debt of salt mines, 
 which up to that date reached nine millions, and now is reduced 
 almost to two millions, for which reason the correspondent titles 
 are quoted to-day in the Exchange with a premium of ten and 
 twelve points without sellers. 
 
 While we faced simultaneously all those obligations, of so 
 much gravity and magnitude, I have been withdrawing the 30 
 per cent, of the custom house entrances of La Guayra and 
 
 50 
 
Puerto Cabello, in accordance with our obligations by the ro- 
 tocols of Washington ; and for this respect pnly I have deposited 
 in the. Bank of England, to the order of that obligation, the 
 amount of five million bolivars in gold. 
 
 It is also opportune to tell you that the legal estimate of your 
 expenses, as Representatives of the Venezuela people, is com- 
 plete in cash. 
 
 Among the public works of importance and beauty, recently 
 undertaken, are the Military Academy and the Academy of 
 Fine Arts ; the custom houses of Tucacas and Macuro, in the 
 port Cristobal Colon, and other buildings, high roads and aque- 
 ducts. These last enterprises of the greatest utility shall un- 
 doubtedly change the mercantile, political and social aspects of 
 vast and rich regions of the country. 
 
 I do not wish to continue enumerating figures and works that 
 you will find very well detailed in the fiscal report, but I wish 
 to proclaim before you, Legislators, the unavoidable conclusion 
 that from these eloquent data comes forth to public opinion, and 
 to the impartial and foreseen national criterion. If in these six 
 months, in these first hundred and eighty days of the period of 
 convalescence that begins, we have realized the works of ad- 
 ministration, that the Government leaves submitted, not to your 
 equity, but to your justice, the degree of progress and welfare 
 that the Republic might have conquered should be eminent, had 
 we employed in this same regenerating labor the years and ef- 
 forts we have spent in defending the country, in taking off harm- 
 less the institutions and the authority, from, the blood and dis- 
 order that, like a cataclysm, like a flood, have passed over the 
 territory and over the honor of Venezuela during times which 
 seemed interminable. 
 
 I came to power with the clear vision of the future in my soul, 
 with all the forecast of the struggle in my thought, and in my 
 heart the necessary fortitude for deliberate efforts; but the blind 
 impulse was so strong that came to surprise me, although it 
 jiever had violence enough to bend my spirit before what had 
 the appearance of victorious and decisive imposition of fatality. 
 
 In thinking about the long time and many riches, lost in such 
 a painful manner, to natural civilization by the work of anarchy, 
 
 51 
 
we necessarily have to meditate on the irremissible guilt of the 
 fellow-citizens that, with antipatriotic eagerness, have contrib- 
 uted to paralize the work of the Restoration, that might have 
 begun with all its efificiency and transcendancy since the armed 
 hand of this great Cause fixed on the memorable 23d of October, 
 1899, upon the dome of the Capital, the flag unfolded to the 
 winds of the Andes and the glories of the future on the heroic 
 23d of May. 
 
 And if in this order of ideas, such a consideration is extremely 
 lamentable, what shall we say if we carry back our thoughts 
 across the century in which we have lived squandering it and 
 outraging our history, until the glorious genial days which the 
 great spirit of Bolivar and the strong arm of his fellow-soldiers 
 insured with epic prodigies the independence of Venezuela. 
 
 Meditate attentively about this; think on the time, on the 
 sun of life, of will and of riches, that have been lost, and tell the 
 Republic if the Restoration and its men have not fulfilled their 
 duty when we raised ourselves face to face with the disastrous 
 wave and established with insuperable decision the energetic 
 formula that is to rectify the destinies of the country. 
 
 SENATORS AND DEPUTIES. 
 
 Let us consecrate in this favorable and solemn opportunity a 
 word of gratitude and of admiration to those abnegated war- 
 riors, legionary of the Liberal Restoration, those gallant com- 
 panions, superior to all weakness, to all hesitation, who with 
 spirited earnestness, with almost homeric effort, since there was 
 no danger that could frighten them, and since in that long 
 period of fight and painful campaigns, they had no choice but 
 death or victory, — co-operated with me in the creation, defense 
 and consolidation of the work of saving the Republic. They al- 
 ways carried the arms of honor, and wielded them for honor, to 
 realize the dream that never disappeared from their generous 
 souls, of founding the institutions and directing the country 
 towards the greatness imperfectly seen by our glorious Libera- 
 tors. 
 
 And everlasting praise for those who perished ! For those who 
 fell in the obstreperous affray, promoted by madness and in- 
 
 52 
 
iquity, a laurel on the stone of their tomb! Their blood, the 
 sacrifice of their lives, is the porpitiatory holocaust of the Res- 
 toration in the august altar of the country ; and, I, in the emotion 
 of my profound gratitude, and in presence of the realized work 
 of peace and progress, invoke at this moment their memory, and 
 consecrate to it this message, that I present to you in the name 
 of the Liberal Restoration Party, and in the performance of my 
 constitutional duty. 
 
 LEGISLATORS. 
 
 I pray that the God of Nations may inspire your deliberations, 
 in order that the wisdom and patriotism of your resolutions con- 
 tribute to the conservation of this great work, complementary of 
 the Independence, reaffirming the national sovereignty under 
 the protection of the union and fraternity of all the Venezuelans, 
 a noble purpose for which I have made, I make, and I will always 
 make the most fervent vows. 
 
 CIPRIANO CASTRO. 
 
 Caracas, February 20th, 1904. 
 
 53