To the truth of this charge, Morales, produced in person here, testifies quite fully and amply, saying: "In the month of May, 1854, application was made to me by Judge Vasquez, a confidential officer of the President, now Secretary of State, to leave the company, and go into the same business separate from them. He said I should be furnished with all the money I required, and that it would be for my interest to leave the company. He tried often to convince me that it was best for me to leave the company, saying, 'you know the Spanish better, you know the business better, and you can make more money.'" He further testifies that another offer of fifty thousand dollars capital, from a relative of the wife of President Lopez, was made to him, and, like the others, declined.

Now, to all this, so important in its character, so circumstantially charged and brought home to the notice of the government of Paraguay, and so easy to be denied, if untrue, by Vasquez, by Garro, and Benancio, so fully proven at this hearing, no evidence is offered in reply. It stands a proven fact, showing the purposes of the government in regard to the cigar business; and it is in conformity with all the testimony as to the motives of Lopez in his whole conduct towards the company.

Decrees.

If there was nothing in the case but the published decrees and the story of their execution, there could not be a more complete instance of wrongful expulsion; and all, it must be remembered, ex post facto. "All meetings of foreigners, except for the ostensible object of visiting and innocent diver sion, are forbidden by day and by night," and that applied to a company who had some twenty odd men about to arrive in a second expedition to join those of the first, and would naturally increase its numbers, and if necessary employ American labor in place of Paraguayan. They might not meet for purposes of business, though invited to the country by liberal inducements in public laws. "The use of any foreign commercial firm in the Republic forbidden, without the express knowledge of the Supreme Government. It has been suggested by counsel that knowledge here imports consent. Be it so; what then? An American could not use the name of his firm, or his own business name, without the consent of the government. Such a decree would be

none the less despotic, because petty-none the less a wrong to the invited foreigner. He must use and take such a name as government shall permit. The change does not, we think, improve the decree. The Spanish word conocimiento means knowledge," and has ever been so rendered in all the translations of this decree and correspondence concerning it. Had not Mr. Hopkins obtained at the corners of the streets the knowledge of the decree, he might not have given, within the three days limited for applying for a license, the formal knowledge, which it is admitted he did to the government, of his title and office, and thus have lost his right to a license under the new decree, to which we next refer, if indeed that decree could affect his rights: "Every industrial or commercial factory unlicensed will be shut up if the persons interested do not take out a license within three days." This, after many months of opened and continued and encouraged business. There is no evidence of any prior law requiring such a license. If there were, it certainly had been waived by the power competent to waive it. But we applied for the license. It was refused, because Mr. Hopkins signed the title of which he had given formal notice, and which had been recognised often by the President himself.

An application for other licenses was made, signed "Per E. A. Hopkins.-M. Morales." These, though customary forms, were refused upon frivolous pretexts. These applications, with the endorsements made upon them at the time of the transaction by Mr. C. E. Hopkins, and sworn to also by M. Morales, are before the commission. The proceedings under the decrees themselves, are the little evasions of a power which_dares not do openly what it is determined to effectually. By a robust Saxon mind they are not easily traced or credited even. The more minutely and closely this business is studied, with a true appreciation of the character of the parties engaged in it, the more transparent will the utter breach of good faith appear, and the thin veil of legal form over illegal act. We should be willing to trust the case to the simple reading of all the decrees in the order of their publication, bearing in mind the proper confidence to be reposed or refused to their recitals of facts. We leave them to judicial examination and to judicial judgment. Only when the last act required physical and open force did Lopez, through his minister, make up his mind to brave what he termed "the gilded guns of the Americans."

Insults and outrages.

As to the sabre blow of the Paraguayan soldier upon Clement E. Hopkins, and other outrages and insults to Americans: The statement of Mr. Hopkins has been given before the commission. He has been examined and crossexamined at length. We submit that the commission will have no doubt of his truth. The Paraguayan government has presented no counter proof. The affidavits taken ex parte and transmitted to the Department of State, pretend that Mr. Hopkins, then an invalid, riding on horseback in company with a lady, rode violently into a drove of oxen and dispersed them, and then the soldier struck him, and he answered with blows and curses. (See page 9, Falcon's despatch.) It is incredible in itself. Ferguson confirms Hopkins in saying that after he had stopped his horse, and while conversing with the lady, the soldier from behind struck him, without a word or warning, a blow with the flat of his sabre. Whether directly in the herd, or up to them, or on the side, is immaterial. The latter the most probable. Hopkins swears to it. Ferguson indistinctly recollects his flying words in conversation, and has no memory to favor Hopkins, certainly.

The government of Paraguay, in fact, confirms Hopkins, by ordering the soldier punished with three hundred lashes; of the execution of the order, however, no evidence was ever given a fact easily proved, then and now. This was not the beginning of the trouble, but one of the occasions used by the government to create an outbreak. Mr. Hopkins very properly speaks in his letter to Mr. Falcon, calling for satisfaction for this outrage, of the series of insults and annoyances to which the Americans had been subjected, and which we have proved in this case. Mr. Falcon pretends ignorance of them. The correspondence will doubtless receive the careful perusal of the commission, and Mr. Hopkins' treatment of the subject in controversy will be found the most triumphant. What confidence can be placed in official communications from this source, when we find this professed ignorance of facts so notorious and so thoroughly proved as the insults and annoyances to Americans in Paraguay ?-annnoyances, in the midst of which, long continued, it would be impossible to live. The wife of our general cashier had, from this cause, been compelled to return home;

called by gross names in the streets; missiles of every offensive kind thrown into the windows of the office and houses; -more abundant than ever when under guard of soldiers. An American knocked down by a stone from behind, another struck with a sword; forbidden by a new decree to carry any defensive weapons; friends and acquaintances requesting, for their own safety, a discontinuance of social relations; landlords requiring their premises; market-people unwilling to sell; servants driven from our employ by the command of the government, and slaves compulsorily taken from us, (see decree of 29th August, '54, quoted in Hopkins' despatch, No. 10;) abuse, beneath that of the most contemptible sheet in this country, heaped upon the Americans in the official paper, (see pages quoted before, and the columns of the Seminario,)-What life is under such circumstances none can know, unless they have been similarly placed. This conduct, stimulated by the government and caused by it! Now, this is most abundantly proved in the affidavits in Hopkins' despatch. The despatch did not reach Secretary Marcy until after he had answered Falcon's despatch. He could not, until compelled by proof, believe that such things could have occurred in Asuncion, and yet Mr. Falcon denies it. After proof of this unreliability, and of other things, Mr. Marcy changed his mind. How fully this conduct and the source of it have been proved, we need not say to the commission. Too full, too abundant, to need citation. No explanation or contradiction in evidence. Counsel may pass lightly over it, but a judge, feeling the responsibility of doing right, will attentively consider it. A manly and positive decree of expulsion by the hands of the police or soldiers, is no more a forcible expulsion than such conduct in such a community and by such a government. The willingness that we should leave, and the withholding of passports in the attempt to extort from us our papers, which might be and have proved to be the most valuable evidences of our rights, and his wrong, are of a piece with the rest. Then the pretence that they were willingly sent, when obtained by the at last firm position of Com. Page, and finally the essential characteristic of misstating the conduct of that officer, averring a rudeness of conduct impossible on his part, as well as denied by him. Counsel indulged in some play upon words with the plain seaman, Captain Potter, as to a forcible expulsion, and yet asking for and taking passports. The victim of tyranny in Naples, we should properly say, was driven from his country,

though to get out he had to ask for passports. The old decree which forbade the Greek wood, fire and water, was a decree properly described as condemning him to exile or death. The force which closed the cigar factory, and the San Antonio, we take to be force, though no blow was struck or weapon used. Mr. Hopkins may use one form of expres sion, he and Mr. Carlisle may argue, but to a plain and honest judicial mind, the decrees, the treatment of the Americans, was an expulsion from the country. We rely upon the full accounts of Captain Page as to the events under which the Americans left, and their position at that time, with the caution that the statements made to him by Lopez shall be credited to just the extent to which he, Captain Page, found them worthy of credit.

San Antonio Expulsion.

That we were expelled from our establishment at San Antonio by force, by the high officers of the government, and by the direct order of the President; that our machinery and implements were carried away under his orders, and disposed of at auction or otherwise, as he saw fit; that the workmen were commanded to cease working in our employ then; the cook taken away summarily by the orders of the authorities; and that the country people even ceased to furnish provisions, as they had been accustomed to do, is not denied. Ferguson, their witness, re-affirms his affidavit, and in his deposition here given, leaves the fact and mode of our expulsion from there beyond a doubt. Boyd and Morales. concur in this testimony, and so Lopez's decrees filed by him confirm it.

Ex. 73, in reply

Now, what is the justification given for this? We quote from the Seminario, ofto President Buchanan :

"Nevertheless, in order to proceed with entire legality in the matter, and to prevent ulterior reclamations, Hopkins was notified to present at the government office any evidences which he might have obtained from the civil notary's office, of any purchases of lands that the government, for just reasons, could not approve; and it ordered Hopkins to be summoned, and had it noted by the civil notary in the original writings.