Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1893 — STEVENS VS. CLEVELAND. [ARTICLE]

STEVENS VS. CLEVELAND.

Che Ex Minlster'a Reply to the Freeldeat’a Hawaiian Menage. Ex-Minister John L. Stevens, at Angnsta, Me., Wednesday, gave out a lengthy reply to President Cleveland’s special Hawaiian message to Congress. He says: ©trfyonce in our political history has a majority of the Congress of the United States solemnly resolved in favor of impeaching the occupant of the executive chair. Probably it was well that the effort to remove AMffrew Johnson from bis office was arrested just on the brink of success. Look at the historical facts dispassionately and no one will deny that the lines of usurpation and injustice on which President Cleveland and the Secretaryuf State have acted since the 7th of March last, coupled with the ex parte star-chamber course of Commissioner Blount relative to the accepted testimony of Lilliuokalani’s fallen ana corrupt ministers are more sweeping and more hostile to Anglo-Saxon liberty than the acts of George the Third and the Lord North ministry, which drove *the American colonies to successful revolt. President Cleveland’s grossly untrue and shamefully unjust allegation against myself and tho naval commissioner rests entirely upon the statements of the noto-riously-corrupt ministers of fallen Queen, of Wilson, the Queen’s favorite, and other thoroughly discredited testimony. I repeat that there has been ample verification, and again that neither by force nor by threat of force nor by any action of mine was. the fall of the monarchy precipitated. I left Honolulu in the steamer Boston Jan. 4, on a trip to Hilo, 259 miles from Honolulu, the first time for many months when I had deemed it safe to leave Honolulu. In the ten daysof our absence from the legation I had known no more of what had been transpiring in Honolulu than though I had been at that time in Washington. Captain VYiltse and myself, on tne Boston, arrived Iff the harbor of Honolulu In the forenoon of January 14, I was completely taken by surprise at what the Queen, the palace associates and the lottery gang had accomplished in ten days. The remonstrances of the chamber of commerce, of the numerous- petitions of some of the best poople of the Islands, both whites and natives, and the earnest pleadings of those who had previously adhered to the monarchy, had been defiantly disregarded. At that time the United States legation was near the royal palace, at a less distance than the Arion Hall, of which Cleveland and Blount speak of so commanding. Of the hall I had never heard until a lodging place was needed for tho marines after they had landed, a hall that I have never yet seen. Bv an accurate map just received from Honolulu it is obvious that this hall does not command the palace. The President’s statement that tho three points at which oar small naval force was placed were not favorably chosen for tne protection of American life and property Is radically an error, as all know who are familiar with the map and the buildings at Honolulu. That the Hawaiian monarchy was overturned by United States force was and is put forth for the sole purpose of bringing discredit on the preceding administration at Washington and on the action of the foreign relations committee of the United States Senate in favor of annexation. It remains to be seen whether the American Congress and American people will approve the e-onsptraev to make war on tne provisional government at Hawaii and use the military force of the United States, or the diplomatic pressure of the United States, tor the restoration of a semi-barbarous queen in wanton defiance of the best American opinions and antecedents, and by an excessive use of executive power against an American colony, more positive and more inexcusable than that which George 111 and his ministers sought to Impose on the American colonies that formed the Government of th< United States. Trustee Work, of Elkhart, is hiring poor people to leave that town. He thinks it Is cheaper than to pay for their keeping out of the public funds.