HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 
 
WILLIS,                         WASHINGTON, January 12, 1894. 
Minister, Honolulu: 
Your numbers 14 to 18, inclusive, show that you have rightly com- 
preliended the scope of your instructions , and have, as far as was in 
your power, discharged the onerous task confided to you. 
The President sincerely regrets that the Provisional Government 
refuses to acquiesce in the conclusion which his sense of right and duty

and a due regard for our national honor constrained him to reach and 
submit as a measure of justice to the people of the Hawaiian Islands 
and their deposed sovereign. While it is true that the Provisional 
Government was created to exist only until the islands were annexed 
to the United States, that the Queen finally, but reluctantly, surren- 
dered to an armed force of this Government illegally quartered in 
Honolulu, and representatives of the Provisional Government (which 
realized its impotency and was anxious to get control of the Queen's 
means of defense) assured her that, if she would surrender, her case 
would be subsequently considered by the United States, the President 
has never claimed that such action constituted him an arbitrator in the 
technical sense, or authorized him to act in that capacity between the 
Constitutional Government and the Provisional Government. You 
made no such claim when you acquainted that Government with the 
President's decision. 
The solemn assurance given to the Queen has been referred to, not 
as authority for the President to act as arbitrator, but as a fact mate-

rial to a just determination of the President's duty in the premises. 
In the note which the minister of foreign affairs addressed to you 
on the 23d ultimo it is stated in effect that even if the Constitutional

Government was subverted by the action of the American minister and 
an invasion by a military force of the United States, the President's 
authority is limited to dealing with our own unfaithful officials, and that

he can take no steps looking to the correction of the wrong done. The 
President entertains a different view of his responsibility and duty. 
The subversion of the Hawaiian Government by an abuse of the author- 
ity of the United States was in'plain violation of international law and

required the President to disavow and condemn the act of our offend- 
ing officials, and, within the limits of his constitutional power, to 
endeavor to restore the lawful authority. 
On the 18th ultimo the President sent a special message to Congress 
communicating copies of Mr. Blount's reports and the instructions 
given to him and to you. On the same day, answering a resolution of 
the House of Representatives, he sent copies of all correspondence 
since March 4, 1889, on the political affairs and relations of Hawaii, 
withholding, for sufficient reasons, only Mr. Stevens' No. 70 of October

8, 1892, and your No. 3 of November 16, 1893. The President therein 
announced that the conditions of restoration suggested by him to the 
Queen had not proved acceptable to her, and that since the instruc- 
tions sent to you to insist upon those conditions he had not learned 
that the Queen Was willing to assent to them. The President there- 
upon submitted the subject to the more extended powers and wider 
discretion of Congress, adding the assurance that-he would be grati- 
fied to cooperate in any legitimate plan which might be devised for a 
solution of the problem consistent with American honor, integrity, and 
morality. 
Your reports show that on further reflection the Queen gave her 
unqualified assent in writing to the conditions suggested, but that the 
 
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