Mr. Haentjens to Mr. Gresham.

[Translation.]

Mr. Secretary of State: In conformity to the wish you expressed to me, I have the honor to record in this dispatch the statement I made to you in our interview of Thursday last, the 10th instant, of the causes and motives which finally determined my Government to expel from the territory of Haiti Eugene Wiener, an American citizen.

The greater number of foreigners who reside in Haiti, as I have told you, Mr. Secretary of State, seek by regular and honorable labor the remuneration of their intelligence and of their capital, but there is also a small number of them composed of adventurers who make a business of speculating on political revolutions. Public order is contrary to their interests, and they incessantly plot to revive troublous times; while, on the other hand, the Government watches them vigilantly in order to render them powerless when the public peace is menaced by their agitations.

Thus, in 1890, 1891, 1892, and 1894, the Haitian Government, after having exercised the utmost degree of forbearance, had to expel an English subject, a Swiss citizen, and seven or eight Frenchmen, all compromised by revolutionary intrigues. The Governments of England, France, and Switzerland, after hearing the explanations of the Haitien Government, were convinced that it had acted at these conj tinctures in the fullness of its right for self-defense and for the maintenance of the public peace. I do not for a moment doubt that it may be the same with the Government of the United States when I shall have exhibited to your excellency the proofs I bring in support of what I have to say to you in regard to Eugene Wiener.

For about fifteen months past at Jeremie, where he resided, and at Kingston, to which he made voyages, Eugene Wiener had often been pointed out to the Haitian Government as a revolutionary propagandist, associated with its enemies. His voyages to Kingston and to New York were denounced as connected with plans of conspiracy with the revolutionary Haitian refugees in the island of Jamaica. Nevertheless, my Government was still undecided as to any measure of repression when a new revelation of the gravest character came to exhaust the degree of toleration practiced by it till then.

The facts are these: On the 6th of August of last year I received from Mr. Freeland, director of the American Bank Note Company, a notice that in the course of an investigation made at New York by the secret police of the Treasury Department, an engraver, Jos. Pelle-tier by name, had revealed to the chief of said police, Mr. William Forsythe, that a Mr. Eugene Wiener, of Jeremie, styling himself agent of the Haitian Government, had given him an order for 2,000,000 Haitien dollars, in $2 bills (billets); that the said Wiener had paid [Page 808] him $75 for his work, in remitting to him as models Haitian notes fabricated by the American Bank Note Company. Pelletier added that he had begun the work, but the earnest recommendations to him by Wiener to act with discretion induced him, on reflection, to abandon it.

From the office of Mr. Freeland I went immediately to that of the “district attorney,” in whose presence Mr. William Forsythe, summoned by telephone, confirmed, word for word, the information which the director of the American Bank Note Company had been so obliging as to communicate to me.

The moment not having arrived for issuing a warrant against Eugene Wiener, he was narrowly watched, when I learned he had sailed for Jeremie. I made known these facts and his departure to President Hyppolite.

In support of the foregoing I have had the honor to place before you: (1) The order of Mr. Freeland; (2) a memorandum by Mr. William Forsythe; (3) the Haitian bank notes (billets de caisse) given by Eugene Wiener to Jos. Pelletier, to serve as patterns; (4) the steel plate on which Pelletier had begun the counterfeiting; (5) lastly, several police reports of conversations in which Wiener convicts himself.

These, Mr. Secretary of State, as briefly as 1 can sum them up, are the reasons which determined my Gozvernment to expel from the territory of Haiti this individual that it considered absolutely dangerous to the public peace, and unworthy of any consideration.

Accept, etc.,

C. Haentjens.