Brown, dated 15th of March, 1853, clearly stated the refusal of the Government of the United States to fully recognize the independence of the Hawaiian Islands, with reference to the United States, and quite as clearly and forcibly declared that, as to all other nations, they were "entirely independent."

In that letter of instructions, Mr. Webster says:

A commission appointing you to the office will be found among the papers you will receive herewith, and a letter from this Department addressed to that minister of the king of the islands who may be charged with foreign relations, accrediting you in your official character. The title selected for your mission has reference in part to its purposes. It is not deemed expedient, at this juncture, fully to recognize the independence of the island or the right of their government to that equality of treatment and consideration which is usually allowed to those governments to which we send and from which we receive diplomatic agents of the ordinary ranks.

By this, however, it is not meant to intimate that the islands, so far as regards all other powers, are not entirely independent. On the contrary, this is a fact respecting which no doubt is felt, and the hope that through the agency of the commissioners independence might be preserved has probably, in a great degree, led to the compliance by Congress with the recommendation of the President.

It is obvious, from circumstances connected with their position, that the United States require that no other power should possess or colonize the Sandwich Islands, or exercise over their government an influence which would lead to partial or exclusive favors in matters of navigation or of trade.

One of your principal duties will be to watch the movements of such agents of other Governments as may visit the islands. You will endeavor to obtain the earliest intelligence respecting the objects of those visits, and if you should think that, if accomplished, they would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, you will make such representations to the authorities of the islands as in your judgment would be most likely to further them.

This first statement of the attitude of Hawaii to the United States, as it was so clearly made by Mr. Webster, comprehends every progressive step in the increasing closeness of our relations with those people, that has occurred in our treaties of reciprocity, in our social, commercial, and religious intercourse, and in the constant protection of our war ships, which for many years have seldom been absent from Honolulu. The purpose of the ultimate annexation of Hawaii to the United States was plainly indicated in the fact that he instructed Mr. Brown to keep a watchful outlook for such efforts on the part of the agents of other governments, and carefully withheld a recognition of that Government, as being independent of the United States, while he distinctly announced their independence of all other powers.

Other American statesmen have declared with one accord that the United States held for various good reasons a peculiar interest in Hawaii. Such has been the opinion and sentiment of the American people from that time to the present, with scarcely a dissenting voice among all of our Presidents, all of our Secretaries of State, and all of our ministers and consuls accredited to that Government.

For many years past the people of the United States and of Hawaii have looked to annexation as a manifest destiny. All legitimate business enterprises there have been based on that recognized fact, and only illegitimate ventures have opposed it.

In the treaty of reciprocity of 1875 the United States demanded, as the consideration of admitting the staple productions of Hawaii free of duty into our ports, that Hawaii should so far renounce her sovereignty over her public domain, her crown lands, and her ports, bays, and harbors, that she could not dispose of them, or of any exclusive or special privileges in them, without the consent of the United States.

The gravity of this concession of her sovereign authority over her own territory to the United States was shown in 1894, when Great Britain proposed that Hawaii should grant to her the exclusive right S. Doc. 231, pt 7-13

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to land a cable on Neckar Island, to which Hawaii was willing, but both Governments fully recognized the fact that the consent of the United States was necessary to be obtained. Great Britain is still pressing for that concession. This treaty arrangement, which is permanent in its character, is a complete demonstration that in this high authority the United States is exercising a right of sovereignty over Hawaii that is utterly inconsistent with the independence of that Government in its relations with the United States.

When that treaty was renewed and extended, in November, 1887, the sovereign grasp of the United States was made firmer and more specific upon the Hawaiian Islands by the stipulation that Pearl Harbor should be in the exclusive possession and control of the United States for the purpose of establishing there a permanent naval station. Such a station, with all needful belongings, including fortifications to protect it, in the exclusive possession of the United States not only shuts out all foreign powers from the harbor, but places it so entirely under the command of our fleets and guns and our military authority that the Hawaiian Government can not enter Pearl Harbor, even with her commerce, if we choose to exclude her by arbitrary military orders.

Pearl Harbor, in a military sense, will be a fortified base for naval operations that completely dominates all the islands and virtually commands the Pacific Ocean for a distance of more than 2,000 miles in all directions.

In these situations, fixed by treaty, the power and authority of the United States over Hawaii is so great and so exclusive that nothing is wanting but the formal consent of that government, expressed in some lawful way, to increase our dominion there to the dignity of sovereign supremacy.

Following the natural course of events in the direction of the inevitable union of Hawaii, by peaceable annexation to the United States, all of our relations have grown more intimate each year until the sovereignty of the islands has thus become, in effect, the sovereignty of the United States through these treaties which are founded alone in the mutual interests of the two countries.

This close relation has been formed with the cordial consent of the sovereign powers of both Governments, as a natural growth of civilization and of progress in political and commercial development, without any plan or purpose of colonization, or of force, or coercion, or persuasion, or threat, or influence, to bring about this auspicious result.

These treaty rights of the United States, and these close and valuaable commercial relations, and the social and church relations of the people of the two countries can not be changed without a shock too rude to be borne, if it can be avoided.

We also hold toward the missionaries, who have brought into Hawaii the light of the twin stars of christianity and constitutional liberty, a national debt of gratitude that good conscience will not permit us to forget; and to their worthy children we owe protection in the enjoyment of the blessings of free republican government that they have created in Hawaii, under our fostering care, with faithful labor and Anglo-Saxon courage.

To our own people who have emigrated to Hawaii under the open invitation of our national policy and under the pledges given by Congress and our Presidents that no foreign power should disturb their rights we owe all the friendly care that a father can owe to his sons who have with his consent left their home to seek their fortunes in other lands. Not many of them have gone to Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, or Cen

tral or South America, or even to Canada, to reside with kindred people, but, under our encouragement and promises of protection, a large and splendid body of Americans have gone to Hawaii to reside, not feeling that they have expatriated themselves, and have carried with them the highest virtues and the most advanced education in art, science, agriculture, and mechanics, and have established homes there that are, many of them, equal in elegance and comfort to any in the United States. We owe it to these people that they should not again be brought into subjection to a monarchy that has lapsed because of its corruptions and its faithless repudiation of solemn oaths. In this obligation our Government is also deeply concerned for the maintenance and enjoyment of our treaty rights in Hawaii.

To these people, and also to the preservation of the native population against a speedy destruction, involving property and life, we owe the duty of rescuing them from the silent but rapid invasion of the pagan races from Asia. This invasion is concerted, and is far more dangerous to Hawaii than if it came on ships of war with the avowed purpose of subjugating the Hawaiian Islands. It is the stealthy approach of a "destruction that wasteth at noonday." The immigrants from Japan retain their allegiance to that Empire, and yet they claim full political rights in Hawaii notwithstanding their alienage. In this demand they have the undisguised encouragement of the Japanese Government. These privileges are demanded as rights.

Such an invasion is clearly within the prohibition that the United States, in all our solemn declarations, have thrown around Hawaii to protect that people against all foreign invasion and interference with their domestic affairs.

The time has arrived when we should make good all these pledges. Efforts of Europeans to prevent the annexation of Hawaii to the United States and to check the growth of that sentiment in Hawaii have been constantly and persistently made on every occasion when that subject has seriously engaged public attention, and our ministers and consuls there, almost without exception, have earnestly called our attention to such interferences during the past fifty years by the accredited agents of European governments, and especially those of Great Britain.

That Government has an interest in these islands that is a legitimate part of her world-embracing commercial policy, to which her great navy and many fortresses in all the seas for its reinforcement are the necessary complement. In this magnificent plan only a single gap remains to be filled. It lies between her possessions in the South Pacific and Esquimalt, on the Straits of Fuca.

It is of vast importance to her commercial power, and no less to her power to protect and defend her possessions at Hongkong and in India and the Polynesian Islands, that she should occupy Hawaii, or some island of that group, where a naval station could be placed and fortified. The initial movement in acquiring such control was the recent effort to get from Hawaii the exclusive right to land a cable on Necker Island. This could only be done with the consent of the United States, which President Cleveland recommended that Congress should give. She came dangerously close to success, but Congress refused to consider the subject, and in its profound silence indicated the resolute purpose of the United States to adhere to our supremacy in Hawaii.

This effort of Great Britain went to the heart of the subject, since a cable connection from Canada with the Orient and with Polynesia would give her the control of all electrical communications that are possible between North America and Asia, and with the islands of the Pacific south of the equator.

This wise forecast of the commercial and naval control of the Pacific Ocean from these islands as a base of operations is not a new or temporary part of the policy of that great empire; neither will it ever be abandoned by Great Britain while there is any hope of its success.

This policy accounts for the intrigues that have been constantly set on foot by British subjects and officials in Hawaii, and for the presence there at this juncture of Kaiulani, who is the daughter of an Englishman, was educated in England, and is, properly, in full sympathy with the English people and the British Government.

This Princess, by the adoption of Liliuokalani, neither of whom has the royal blood of the Kamehamehas, but are the creation of the constitution of Hawaii, is waiting in Hawaii to be crowned queen of the islands when the Congress of the United States has decreed the restoration of the monarchy by refusing annexation to the Republic of Hawaii, or has thrown open the door to insurrection in the islands through which the monarchy still has lively hopes of resurrection.

If Great Britain is not industriously and openly engaged in fomenting this concerted movement for the destruction of the Republic and the restoration of the monarchy on its ruins, her agents and the Princessher protégé are kept conveniently near at hand to fasten her power upon the islands, on the happening of any pretext for the protection of the lives and property of British subjects in Hawaii.

In this high and noble duty of taking care of her people, Great Britain never fails, nor is she reluctant in listening to the demands of her subjects for the protection of her flag.

It is no less than a blind confidence in the impossible to assume that Great Britain has no special interest in Hawaii, when that is the only missing link in the cordon of great fortresses with which it is her proud ambition to girdle the world.

We can not so discredit her sagacity, in justice to our common sense. She still has and will ever have a most important use for dominion in Hawaii.

JAPAN HAS OPENLY PROTESTED against the annexation of Hawai to the United States upon grounds that indicate an unjust suspicion of our national honor in our future dealing with her subjects in those islands. The blunt refusal of the President to consider this protest caused Japan to make a formal withdrawal of it, but this diplomatic intervention can not be dissociated from its real predicate, which is the demand made by Japan upon the Republic of Hawaii, which has not been withdrawn, that her subjects in Hawaii shall have equal privileges with the natives in voting at elections and in holding offices.

Of these subjects of Japan in Hawaii the larger number were soldiers in the war with China, and are still subject to the military orders of the Emperor.

Almost the entire number of Japanese in Hawaii are coolies, who were brought there under the authority of the two Governments, and were to return to Japan at the end of their term of service.

They claim the right to remain in Hawaii under a general treaty which applied only to such persons as came for temporary or permanent residence as voluntary immigrants. This claim is disputed by Hawaii, and there is still trouble over it. Under such circumstances the pres ence and the constant inflow of Japanese in great numbers is an evil which threatens the native people with the loss of their means of living and the whole country with the overflow of paganism. It also threatens the overthrow of the Republic and the destruction of the lives and property of the republicans through an insurrection or combination

of the lower classes of natives, who are for the most part adherents of royalty and are under the control of the Kahunas, who are sorcerers, with the Japanese.

The policy of Japan toward Hawaii will become aggressive and determined so soon as the United States refuses to annex the islands, and makes the return to monarchy possible.

France has very recently annexed Tahiti to the Republic, and has sent ships of war to Honolulu with overtures for the establishment of a cable to connect these islands with Hawaii. This may or may not look toward invasion or coercion, but it distinctly ignores the right of the United States to be consulted with reference to such an important plan.

All these powers are anxious to acquire the suzerainty over Hawaii, and they would quickly agree that either of them should occupy the islands, on a pledge of their absolute neutrality in time of war, or of the common right to resort to them for coal and for water and refreshment. This was, in effect, the joint proposal of France and Great Britain that was twice submitted to the United States for their concurrence, and refused by us.

Like proposals were submitted by those Governments to the United States relating to Cuba, which offers were also refused.

The jealous watchfulness of these powers as to the constantly increasing influence of the United States in these islands to the south and the west of us has been manifested so often in the past fifty years that it is impossible to believe that they are not ready and anxious to occupy them, or at least to enforce their neutrality and to make their ports free whenever the United States has relaxed or has cast off the hold it has upon Hawaii by treaty and through the process of affiliation that has brought them so nearly within our sovereign dominion.

They fully understand that if we now refuse to annex Hawaii that they will be at liberty to treat with any government there, either for annexation or for protection or for reciprocal trade on terms that we now have the exclusive right to insist upon.

It is true, as a matter of fact, as well as in the logic of the situation, that the refusal to annex Hawaii will mean, and will be so intended, to revoke our treaties of reciprocity with that Government, and, in that event, the United States will give up the rights secured to us in both those treaties.

It will mean that Hawaii is thereby notified that we will terminate those treaties, and that she will have the equal right to do so and to reclaim the consideration that she gave us for agreeing to them. Whether or not such a construction of our rights under these treaties would comport with their terms, these anxious powers that crave the islands would insist upon their right to protect a weak power against the apparent injustice of our holding our exclusive rights in Pearl Harbor and over the public domain in Hawaii after we had refused the reciprocity in trade which was the express consideration paid to us for that concession.

When the concession of exclusive rights in Pearl Harbor was made to us in the last treaty of reciprocity, and after it had been ratified, but before ratifications had been exchanged, the Hawaiian minister and the minister of the United States signed a protocol which declared that our rights in Pearl Harbor would cease whenever the treaty was terminated. That protocol was no part of the treaty, it not having been submitted to the Senate for its action, but such an insistence by the United States would give offense to the public sentiment of the