Mr. Everett to Mr. Legare.

No. 41.]

H. S. Legare, Esq.,
Secretary of State:

Sir: At a late hour last evening I received a note from the Earl of Aberdeen requesting an interview at noon this day, at which he informed me that since he saw me last he had received a dispatch from Mr. Doyle, the British chargé d’Affairés at Mexico, dated April 24, transmitting a printed and evidently authentic paper, in which the particulars of the “provisional cession” of the Sandwich Islands to Great Britain are set forth. Lord Aberdeen allowed me to read Mr. Doyle’s dispatch and the printed paper, and also read to me the dispatch which he had himself prepared to Mr. Fox on the subject, and the papers accompanying it. As these documents will be communicated to you, I do not know that there is anything left for me to say, Lord Aberdeen’s oral communication being but a repetition and amplification of the contents of his dispatch to Mr. Fox and his letter of last October [Page 113] to the commissioners of the Sandwich Islands. He said the account in the printed paper was a confused and not very intelligible affair, and his only reason for any reserve in expressing himself on the subject arose from the fact that Lord George Paulet was one of the most discreet and judicious officers of their navy, and could not, he thought, have acted without better grounds than might be inferred from the printed accounts.

It will perhaps be in my power, by the next steamer, to give you further information on the subject.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

Edward Everett.