Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 5, 1881

No. 342.
Mr. Blaine to Mr. Lowell .

Department of State,
Washington , December 10, 1881.

No. 286.]

Sir: For some time past I have had important correspondence with the United States minister resident at Honolulu touching the efforts of foreign countries to gain the same footing in Hawaii as is given by the reciprocity treaty to the United States, and concerning also the endeavors of the Hawaiian Government to meet the problem of a decreased and decreasing native population. These tendencies are all sufficiently marked to enlist the interest and even the anxiety of this government, which has considered the Hawaiian group as distinctly embraced in the American Pacific system, and which has in many ways shown its appreciation of the intimacy and directness that should control the relation of the United States thereto.

Copies of the Department’s correspondence^* with Mr. Comly are herewith transmitted for your information, as indicating the apparent purposes of Great Britain to acquire a controlling influence in Hawaiian commerce, and to encourage Cooly emigration to the islands from British India. This last movement has seemed to me sufficiently grave to warrant an explicit declaration to the Hawaiian Government that the United States regards the Hawaiian group as essentially a part of the American system of states, and the key to the North Pacific trade, and that, while favorably inclined toward the continuance of native rule on a basis of political independence and commercial assimilation with the United States, we could not regard the intrusion of any non-American interest in Hawaii as consistent with our relations thereto.

You will not, unless further instructed, bring this subject formally to the attention of Lord Granville. Should his lordship, as the result of advices that may reach him from the British minister at Honolulu, introduce the subject officially, you will be prepared from the information herewith transmitted to discuss it freely and to acquaint him with the expectations and intentions of your government. It is to prepare you for such a contingency that the inclosures are sent you.

I am, &c.,

JAMES G. BLAINE.

1. For correspondence referred to see under Hawaii.