Mr. Everett to Mr. Legare.
H. S. Legare,
Esq.,
Secretary of State:
Sir:
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The immediate object of my interview with Lord Aberdeen was to make inquiry relative to a report contained in the papers of the week, that the sovereignty of the Sandwich Islands had been ceded to the Queen of Great Britain, and possession taken by Lord George Paulet, of the ship of war Carysfort, the British officer commanding in those seas. This report will no doubt have attracted your notice; and following so closely after the official recognition of the independence of these islands by the United States and Great Britian herself is well calculated to produce uneasiness and suprise, and in this light I spoke of it to Lord Aberdeen.
He said they were entirely without information on the subject beyond what the newspapers contained and had no other reason to believe in the fact of the occupation. He could only say, at present, that if any such thing had taken place it was entirely without authority or instructions, as I could easily infer from the recent official recognition of the independence of the islands by Great Britain, which was made known to me at the time. I observed to Lord Aberdeen that, of course, if the islands had been thus without authority taken possession of, the act would be immediately disavowed by Her Majesty’s Government. He said it might not be proper for him, in the absence of all information, under an entire ignorance of what had been done, to pledge the Government to any course; but he was quite willing to say that the intelligence [Page 112] had produced no change in the opinions and feelings which led him to advise the recognition, and that he still remained without the least wish for any addition to their colonial possessions. He told me they had several times declined to accept the sovereignty of different groups of islands in the Pacific which had beed offered to them. If the report was founded in truth, he thought the cession might have proceeded from apprehensions on the part of the government of the Sandwich Islands that the French were meditating also the occupation of that group and that aversion to the French might have led them, in the absence of Mr. Richards, to wish to place themselves under British protection. I told Lord Aberdeen that I had understood from a private source of information that the Hawaiian Commissioners at Washington had offered to place the islands under the protection of the United States; that I could not vouch for the truth of the report, but that if the offer were made it was certainly, as he was aware, declined.
In reference to the reserve with which he had spoken of giving up the islands, if possession as reported had been taken of them, Lord Aberdeen said this reserve was only in majorem cautelam, in consideration of his total ignorance of the circumstances of the case, and not because his opinions and feelings as to the expediency of the measure were at all varied by the rumored fact of the occupation. On my remarking that in one version of the newspaper report the cession was said to have been accepted by Lord George Paulet in full satisfaction for demands of compensation for injuries sustained by British subjects from the Government of the Sandwich Islands, he said he was not acquainted with any such demands and should be doubly unwilling to sanction a cession made on that basis. Upon the whole, when I reflect how distinctly and how recently this Government is pledged to the United States, to France, and to the Sandwich Islands themselves to recognize their independence I cannot doubt that thfe act of the commander of the Carysfort will be readily disavowed.
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I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant,