Office of the Historian

Mr. Lincoln to Mr. Gresham.

No. 967.]
Legation of the United States,
London, April 7, 1893.

Sir: Referring to Mr. White’s dispatch, No. 961, of 4th instant, I have the honor to inclose herewith a statement made yesterday in reply to a question, in the House of Commons, by Mr. S. Buxton, parliamentary under secretary for the colonies, relative to the regulation issued by Her Majesty’s high commission for the western Pacific.

It will be observed that the British Government propose to modify some portions of the recent ordinance directed against sedition in Samoa, which was forwarded to you in the dispatch previously referred to, and the colonial office denies that the regulation in question was issued at the instance of a foreign power or was directed exclusively at Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, as implied in that gentleman’s letter to the Times newspaper.

I have, etc.,

Robert T. Lincoln.
[Inclosure in No. 967]

Samoa.

[The Times, Friday, April 7, 1893.]

In reply to Mr. Henniker Heaton, Mr. S. Buxton said the arrangements as to the affairs of Samoa, which were agreed to at Berlin by the Governments of Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, were still in force. It had been decided to instruct the high commissioner of the western Pacific to modify some portions of the recent ordinance directed against sedition in Samoa. That ordinance was not issued in consequence of representations by a foreign power, nor was it aimed exclusively at Mr. R. L. Stevenson.