A year later, however, Mr. Seward wrote that "the public attention sensibly continues to be fastened upon the domestic questions which have grown out of the late Civil War. The public mind refuses to dismiss these questions even so far as to entertain the higher but more remote questions of national extension and aggrandizement." a Early in 1871, the discussion of annexation was reopened by the minister of the United States at Honolulu.' His dispatch was confidentially communicated to the Senate by President Grant without any recommendation, but with the statement that the views of the Senate, if it should be deemed proper to express them, "would be very acceptable with reference to any future course which there might be a disposition to adopt."c "The position of the Sandwich Islands as an outpost fronting and commanding the whole of our possessions on the Pacific Ocean, gives to the future of those islands a peculiar interest to the Government and people of the United States. It is very clear that this Government can not be expected to assent to their transfer from their present control to that of any powerful maritime or commercial nation. Such transfer to a maritime power would threaten a military surveillance in the Pacific similar to that which Bermuda has afforded in the Atlanticthe latter has been submitted to from necessity, inasmuch as it was congenital with our Government-but we desire no additional similar outposts in the hands of those who may at some future time use them to our disadvantage. "The condition of the Government of Hawaii and its evident tendency to decay and dissolution force upon us the earnest consideration of its future-possibly its near future. "There seems to be a strong desire on the part of many persons in the islands, representing large interests and great wealth, to become annexed to the United States. And while there are, as I have already said, many and influential persons in this country who question the policy of any insular acquisitions, perhaps even of any extension of territorial limits, there are also those of influence and of wise foresight who see a future that must extend the jurisdiction and the limits of this nation, and that will require a resting spot in the midocean, a Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Spalding, July 5, 1868, For. Rel. 1894, App. II. 144. See, also, confidential circular, Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Dix, min. to France, Aug. 31, 1868, referring to a special mission from Hawaii to Europe for the revision of treaties, and saying: "While the opinion extensively prevails among us that the sovereignty of those islands ought to be acquired without delay by the United States, the opinion is universal that it would be incompatible with the interests of the United States to let the islands fall under the jurisdiction, protection, or dominating influence of any foreign power." (MS. Inst. France, XVIII. 191.) Mr. Pierce to Mr. Fish, February 25, 1871, For. Rel. 1894, App. II. 17. Confidential message to the Senate, April 5, 1871, For. Rel. 1894, App. II. 16; Mr. Fish, Sec. of State, to Mr. Pierce, April 5, 1871, MS. Inst. Hawaii, II. 212. between the Pacific coast and the vast domains of Asia, which are now opening to commerce and Christian civilization." Mr. Fish, Sec. of State, to Mr. Pierce, min. to Hawaii, March 25, 1873, For. Jan. 30, 1875. In 1874 King Kalakaua, with a suite of several persons and accompanied by the American minister, visited the United Reciprocity treaty, States. He arrived in San Francisco at the end of November, and after visiting Washington made a journey through New England and other parts of the country. He returned to Hawaii in February, 1875, on the U. S. S. Pensacola. One of the principal objects of his visit was to obtain a reciprocity treaty." January 30, 1875, there was concluded between the United States and the Hawaiian Islands a convention concerning commercial reciprocity. Article IV., as amended by the Senate, provided that His Hawaiian Majesty should not, while the treaty remained in force, "lease or otherwise dispose of or create any lien upon any port, harbor, or other territory in his dominions, or grant any special privilege or rights of use therein to any other power, state, or government, nor make any treaty by which any other nation shall obtain the same privileges, relative to the admission of any articles free of duty, hereby secured to the United States." Another amendment of the Senate, in Art. V., provided that the treaty should not take effect till a law to carry it into operation should be passed by the Congress of the United States. Such a law was approved Aug. 15, 1876, and on the 9th of September the President by proclamation declared the treaty to be in operation. Claims were afterwards made by British and German merchants, with the support of their Governments, for the benefits of the treaty in Hawaii under the most-favored-nation clauses in their treaties with that Government. By a separate article to the treaty between Germany and Hawaii, concluded at Berlin March 25 and at Honolulu Sept. 19, 1879, it was expressly agreed that "the special advantages granted by said convention [of Jan. 30, 1875] to the United States of America, in consideration of equivalent advantages, shall not in any a For. Rel. 1875, I. 669–679; S. Ex. Doc. 2, 44 Cong. 1 sess. See Mr. Fish, Sec. of State, to Mr. Pierce, April 8, 1875, MS. Inst. Hawaii, II. 286. The treaty is discussed in the President's Message of Dec. 6, 1875, H. Ex. Doc. 1, 44 Cong. 1 sess.; reports, favorable and unfavorable, on the bill to carry it into effect may be found in H. Report 116, parts 1 and 2, 44 Cong. 1 sess. and the debates may be seen in the Cong. Record. See also the President's Message, Dec. 9, 1876, H. Ex. Doc. 1, 44 Cong. 2 sess.; and the President's proclamation of Sept. 9, 1876, 19 Stats. 666. case be invoked in favor of the relations sanctioned by the present treaty," though it contained (Art. III) a most-favored-nation clause. In respect of the claims of the British merchants, the Government of the United States informed that of Hawaii that it would consider their admission as a violation of the treaty, and that "if any other power should deem it proper to employ undue influence upon the Hawaiian Government to persuade or compel action in derogation of this treaty, the Government of the United States will not be unobservant of its rights and interests, and will be neither unwilling nor unprepared to support the Hawaiian Government in the faithful discharge of its treaty obligations." a 66 can predominance. "The position of the Hawaiian Islands in the vicinity of our Pacific coast, and their intimate commercial and political Assertions of Ameri- relations with us, lead this Government to watch with grave interest, and to regard unfavorably, any movement, negotiation, or discussion aiming to transfer them in any eventuality whatever to another power." Mr. Blaine, Sec. of State, to Mr. Lowell, Apr. 23, 1881, MS. Inst. Gr. Brit., "The Government of the United States has always avowed and now repeats that, under no circumstances, will it permit the transfer of the territory or sovereignty of these islands to any of the great European powers. It is needless to restate the reasons upon which that determination rests. It is too obvious for argument that the possession of these islands by a great maritime power would not only be a dangerous diminution of the just and necessary influence of the United States in the waters of the Pacific, but in case of international difficulty it would be a positive threat to interests too large and important to be lightly risked. "Neither can the Government of the United States allow an arrangement which, by diplomatic finesse or legal technicality, substitutes for the native and legitimate constitutional Government of Hawaii the controlling influence of a great foreign power. This is not the real and substantial independence which it desires to see and which it is prepared to support. And this Government would consider a scheme by which a large mass of British subjects, forming in time not improbably the majority of its population, should be introduced into Hawaii, made independent of the native Government, and be ruled by British authorities, judicial and diplomatic, as one entirely inconsistent with the friendly relations now existing between us, as trenching upon « Mr. Blaine, Sec. of State, to Mr. Comly, minister to Hawaii, June 30, 1881, For. Rel. 1881, 624-626. treaty rights which we have secured by no small consideration, and as certain to involve the two countries in irritating and unprofitable discussion." Mr. Blaine, Sec. of State, to Mr. Comly, U. S. minister at Honolulu, Nov. 19, 1881, For. Rel. 1881, 633. "Before the United States had become a power on the Pacific coast, the commercial activity of our people was manifested in their intercourse with the islands of Oceanica, of which the Hawaiian group is the northern extremity. In 1848 the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo confirmed the territorial extension of the United States to the Pacific, and gave to the Union a coast line on that ocean little inferior in extent, and superior in natural wealth, to the Atlantic seaboard of the original thirteen States. In 1848-49 the discoveries of gold in California laid the foundation for the marvelous development of the western coast, and in that same year the necessities of our altered relationship to the Pacific Ocean found expression in a comprehensive convention of friendship, commerce, and navigation with the sovereign Kingdom of Hawaii.. The movements toward intimate commercial relations between the two countries after the progressive negotiations of 1856, 1867, and 1869, culminated in the existing reciprocity treaty of January 30, 1875, which gave to the United States in Hawaii, and to Hawaii in the United States, trading rights and privileges in terms denied to other countries. "Since that time [1848] our domain on the Pacific has been vastly increased by the purchase of Alaska. Taking San Francisco as the commercial center on the western slope, a line drawn northwestwardly to the Aleutian group marks our Pacific border almost to the confines of Asia. A corresponding line drawn southwestwardly from San Francisco to Honolulu marks the natural limit of the ocean belt within which our trade with the oriental countries must flow, and is, moreover, the direct line of communication between the United States and Australasia. Within this belt lies the commercial domain of our western coast. "I have had recent occasion to set forth the vitally integral importance of our Pacific possessions, in a circular letter addressed on the 24th of June last to our representatives in Europe, touching the necessary guarantees of the proposed Panama Canal as a purely American waterway to be treated as part of our own coast line. The extension of commercial empire westward from those States is no less vitally important to their development than is their communication with the eastern coast by the isthmian channel. "In thirty years the United States has acquired a legitima ely dominant influence in the North Pacific, which it can never consent to see decreased by the intrusion therein of any element of influence hostile to its own. The situation of the Hawaiian Islands, giving them the strategic control of the North Pacific, brings their possession within the range of questions of purely American policy, as much so as that of the Isthmus itself. Hence the necessity, as recognized in our existing treaty relations, of drawing the ties of intimate relationship between us and the Hawaiian Islands so as to make them practically a part of the American system without derogation of their absolute independence. The reciprocity treaty of 1875 has made of Hawaii the sugar-raising field of the Pacific slope, and gives to our manufacturers therein the same freedom as in California and Oregon. That treaty gave to Hawaii its first great impetus in trade, and developed that activity of production which has attracted the eager attention of European powers anxious to share in the prosperity and advantages which the United States have created in mid-ocean. From 1877, the first full year succeeding the conclusion of the reciprocity treaty, to 1880, the imports from Hawaii to the United States nearly doubled, increasing from $2,550,335 in value to $4,606,444, and in this same period the exports from the United States to Hawaii rose from $1,272,949 to $2,026,170. In a word, Hawaii is, by the wise and beneficent provisions of the treaty, brought within the circle of the domestic trade of the United States, and our interest in its friendly neutrality is akin to that we feel in the guaranteed independence of Panama. On the other hand, the interests of Hawaii must inevitably turn toward the United States in the future, as in the present, as its natural and sole ally in conserving the dominion of both in the Pacific trade. Your own observation, during your residence at Honolulu, has shown you the vitality of the American sentiment which this state of things has irresistibly developed in the islands. I view that sentiment as the logical recognition of the needs of Hawaii as a member of the American system of states rather than as a blind desire for a protectorate or ultimate annexation to the American Union. "This Government has on previous occasions been brought face to face with the question of a protectorate over the Hawaiian group. It has, as often as it arose, been set aside in the interest of such commercial union and such reciprocity of benefits as would give to Hawaii the highest advantages, and at the same time strengthen its independent existence as a sovereign state. In this I have summed up the whole disposition of the United States toward Hawaii in its present condition. "The policy of this country with regard to the Pacific is the natural complement to its Atlantic policy. The history of our European relations for fifty years shows the jealous concern with which the United States has guarded its control of the coast from foreign interference, and this without extension of territorial possession beyond the mainland. It has always been its aim to preserve the friendly neutrality of the adjacent states and insular possessions. Its attitude toward Cuba is in point. |