The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-04 00:00:00

" QUEEN POMARE TO ADMIRAL DUPETIT THOLTRAS.

" Admiral,—l have received the letter you have
written to me relative to the flag. M. Carpegna.has
also told me all that you wished him to say.
" I can in no way agree to your demand that I should
take down my flag. It bears the emblem of my
sovereignty, and shows the motive why I wish to keep
it. Moreover, the treaty stipulates nothing with regard
to the flag.
" Any person that may attack my flag will be most
culpable.—Accept, &c., POMARE."

"QUEEN, POMARE TO ADMIRAL DUPETIT TROURAS.
"Papeete, 6th Nov., 1843.
" Admiral,—l have not deviated anything from the
treaty which I concluded on the 9th of September, 1842
—a treaty which I subscribed under the influence of fear.
Yes, I must repeat it, if I have given my signature, it
was simply owing to fear.
" I can assure you that in placing a crown on my flag
I had no intention of breaking the treaty, or of placing
myself in opposition to the European Governments.
Such is my Royal will.
" I do not desire in any way to create the smallest
estrangement between myself and the King of France.
Far from that, I am full of respect for his person, as
well as for the treaty concluded with him.
" I have complied with the wish expressed by you a
few days ago in one of your letters, in which you re-
quest me to apprise the chiefs that you wish them to
meet, in order that you might present the Commissioner
of the King of France, and communicate the letters of
which he is the bearer.

" I desire that no disorder may take plate in my Go.
Vernment, and that is the wish which I have caused to
be made known to my people.
" One of my most ardent wishes is to be the only suf-
ferer by the circumstances which are at present taking
place, but I beg of you not to deprive me of my sove-
reignty ; leave me all that belongs to me, and do not
establish yourself on the little island Hontononta.
" I place all my confidence in God, and I beg the
protection of your King.
" Receive my salutations.
(Signed) " POMARE, Queen of Otaheite.
" To Admiral Dupetit Thouars."

" ADMIRAL DUPETIT THOUARS TO 'MADAME' POMARE.
" Bay of Papeete, on board the Frigate
La Reine Blanche, Nov. 9, 1843
" Madame,—l have the honour to inform you, that I
have no longer now the powor of holding any official
communication with you. All communications that
you may desire to lay before his Majesty Louis Philippe,
must be addressed to Governor Bruat.
" A. DUPETIT THOUARS."
" LETTER TO THE RING.
" Parfai, Otaheite, Nov. 9, 1843.
" Petition of Pomare, to Louis Philippe, King of the
French.
" 0 King ! I have been deprived this day of my Go-
vernment. My sovereignty has been violated, and your
Admiral has, with arms in his hands, taken possession of
my territory, because I was accused of not observing the
treaty concluded on the 9th of September, 1842.
" I never had the intention, in putting the crown in
Iny flag, to condemn the said treaty and to insult you,
0 King !
" I suppose that you do not consider the fact of my
having put the crown in my flag as a crime. Your Ad-
miral only demanded the change of a small part ; but if
I had consented to that, my sovereignty would have been
deposed by the great chiefs.
I did not know there was any part of the treaty
hich fixed the nature of my flag.
I protest formally against the harsh measure taken
by your Admiral ; but I have confidence in you, and I
expect my deliverance from your compassion, from
your justice, and from your goodness, for a Sovereign
without power.
" My prayer is this—May the Almighty soften your
heart, may you recognise the justice of my demand,
and restore me to my sovereignty and the government of
my ancestors.
" Be blessed by God, 0 King, and may your reign be
long and flourishing !
" Such is my prayer.
(Signed)

" POMARE."

COPY OF A LETTER FROM COMMODORE -
NICOLAS TO ADMIRAL DU PETIT THOUARS.
" Her Britannic Majesty's Ship Vindictive, in
Papeete Harbour, Otaheite, June 4, 1843.
" Sir,--Having come to this island in the month
of February last, expressly with the hope of - having
the honour of meeting you here, in order to have ex-
(xained to you fully the exact relation in which
rcat Britain stands with regard to Otaheite, I think
it right, now that I am led to expect you daily, thus to
convey to you in writing the nature of those relations.
But, first, I must observe to you, Sir, that which
your experience in diplomacy will at once make ma-
nifest to you, that until I receive the commands of my
Sovereign, it is impossible for me to acknowledge the
validity of the treaty which you have made with the
qtlo9ll Of Otaheite, though I have uniformly shown every
courtesy towards it, and am still disposed to do so whilst
we are awaiting the decision of our respective Govern-
ments.

"My correspondence with the officer in command of
the naval forces of France at this place, as well as that
which I have had with the Provisional Government, you
will, I trust, do me the honour to read, as I have re-
quested that the whole of these documents may be laid
before you.
"By this correspondence you will observe, Sir, the
measures that I have pursued relative to the Queen
Poniard and her Government since my arrival here.
Those measures have been guided by the authorities on
international law which I have always kept before me ;
and by a reference to those writers, as quoted in my
different letters, I hope and believe that you will find
that I have not digressed in any shape from the limits
they prescribe.
" Although, Sir, it may now be too late to effer such
observations as I could have desired to have done, as the
senior British naval officer in this part of the Pacific
Ocean, had I fortunately been at Otaheite at the period of
your demanding the treaty in question ; yet, I hope I
may still be permitted to call your attention to certain
facts bearing upon it, of which I have acquired a know-
ledge during my long detention here ; and the greater
part of these, it is my sincere belief, that you are wholly
unacquainted with. Several of these facts I transmitted
with my letter of the 28th of May to Captain Vrig-
naud for your information and that of the French Go-
vernment ; and I would particularly request your peru-
sal of the declarations of the different Chiefs at the
meetings that have been held during your absence, as
conveying the real feelings of the people of Otaheite
towards our respective nations. These papers are
marked from No. 1 to 10, and are with Capt. Vrignaud.
" I am aware, Sir, that it will be represented to you
by the French Consul, that I have counselled the Queen
Pomare to adopt certain measures which he deems an
infringement of the rights guaranteed to her Majesty
under your treaty. But here, Sir, I am directly at issue
with him ; for I contend--and I am prepared to prove
my assertion by the authorities to which I have referred
in my several letters (and these are, I believe, the most
celebrated writers on international law),—that the Queen
has not deviated one iota from her prerogative of
sovereignty which was confirmed to her Mtkjesty by the
treaty which, to use her Majesty's words, she was com-
pelled to sign in the month of September last.'
" In my letter to Captain Vrignaud, hereinbefore
referred to, I stated to him, that immediately upon my
arrival hero, and even before I had anchored, I re-
e.oived a letter from the Queen, in which she threw her-
self wholly on the protection of Great Britain, claiming
the fulfilment of those solemn assurances which had
been, from time to time, vaade to her father and herself
by the British Government.
Being in possession of those assurances, I considered
it my imperative duty to act up to them, to the extent of' my
power, by submitting to the consideration of the Queen
Pomare my best advice 'whenever her Majesty soli-
cited it, whereby I know that it has been repre-
sented, that whilst the flag of France has been her Ma-
t)4, ostensible protector, that of Great Britain has
virtually executed this duty. But, Sir, oven allowing
this to be the fact, I feel and know that I have
never exceeded the strict limits of my duty as a British
officer, fulfilling), to the best of my abilities, the assur-
Ane4 a my Sovereign; and, however much her Majesty
the Queen of Otaheite may have felt the truth of this
statement, and that her having acted in accordance with
it may, at times, have been disagreeable to the Provi-
sional Government, who may have viewed the terms of'
the tre-aty difibrontly from the Queen and myself, yet I
oolifidentiy trust that I have acted rightly under the cir-
cumstances in which I have been placed, it having been
my most anxious desire to do this ; indeed, so sincerely
du I hope that I shall have merited the approbation of
my Government, that were I in a precisely similar posi-

.

. ~ i). ~.

tion to-morrow, I would closely adhere to the same
course, be the consequences whatever they might.
" To refer more particularly to the existing treaty,
your intimate knowledge of diplomacy must show you,
Sir, that as I have just observed, it can have no vali-
dity in point of fact until it has been ratified by your
Sovereign, nor, as regards me, until it has 'been ac..
knowledged by mine. Hence, in my counselling the
Queen from time to time, agreeably to her Majesty's
requests, I have only been duly carrying out, as I
I have already stated, the views and intentions of my
Government, by giving to her Majesty all the protec-
tion of our good offices in the differences which unhappily
exist between her Majesty and yourself as the repre-
sentative of the King of the French in these seas; but in
all my advice to Queen Pomare I have uniformly coun-
selled her Majesty to confine the exercise of her prero-
gative, for the present, to the, government of her own
subjects solely, and this right was irrefutably secured
to her Majesty by the treaty against which she so loudly
complains, and which, if ratified by your Government,
will at once take from the Queen all her attributes as
regards her foreign relations.
" The Queen, however, having most solemnly declared
again and again, and which declarations have been trans-
mitted by her, both to the King of the French as well as
the Queen of England, that it was through fear, and fear
alone, arising from the menaces that overwhelmed her,
that her Majesty put her name with agonising reluct-
ance, as she herself States (and this is confirmed by
those who were then around her), to the paper that was
sent to her to sign, I feel convinced, Sir, that when your
Sovereign is made acquainted with this important fact,
his Majesty will withhold his ratification until further
explanation has been had on this grave question; and I
feel equally satisfied, Sir, that had you been fully ac-
quainted with all the events that occurred at that period
near the Queen at Eimeo, you never would have sanc-
tioned such proceedings being used towards her Majesty,
and the more especially so, whilst you had borne in mind
the delicate situation in which her Majesty then was ; a
situation which has ever claimed from men of every civil
lized country in the world protection, and kindness, and
favour, and, most of all, from those of a nation which
stands pre-eminent in its chivalric gallantry towards that
sex whom we all regard it to be our highest honour to
guard from insult, and to shield from wrong.
"In addition to this painful circumstance, I have
further to observe, that Ihave been credibly assured that,
some days subsequent to her Majesty having, after many
hours' refusal, at length, through threats on the one side,
and urgent importunities on the other, put her name
to the first document that was forwarded to her at
Eimeo (the treaty), and which act she did, as she then
declared, and still declares, solely to save her subjects
from the fire of your guns, a second (the proclamation),
was laid before her Majesty for her signature, and which
at last her Majesty also signed, through the menacing
demands of the Consul of France, and these insulting
threats were offered, it cannot be forgotten, at a time
when the Queen's accouchement was hourly looked for,
and, in truth, within one hour of her Majesty's signa-
ture being so unfeelingly and so harshly obtained, she
was actually taken in labour, the pains of which were has-
tened, as it is universally believed, by the great distress
of mind, together with the offensive conduct of the
French Consul towards this unhappy defenceless woman!
And her Majesty gave birth to a child, after great suf-
fering, on the following day.
" France, Europe, the world, Sir, will form its opinion
of these unexampled proceedings; and which you will,
I am assured, alike censure and condemn.

" These facts, which you thus become possessed of,
and which, I believe, were hitherto unknown to you,
will, I feel convinced, cause you sincerely to deplore the '
events that I now describe, in relation to the Queen of
this island, and these events, when brought to the con-
sideration of your generous Sovereign, will, I am confi-
dent, at once induce his Majesty to restore to the Queen
Pomare all those rights which, it is manifest, she most
unwillingly and most reluctantly surrendered. Hence I
trust you will, on becoming acquainted with the true
state of Her Majesty's case, unite with me, and with all
who have heard of these facts, in reprobation of the
conduct of the individual* who has been the main in-
strument of all the evils that have arisen of late in
Otaheite, and who, I am credibly informed, has been
heard to say-, on one or more occasions, That it should
not be his fault if there was not a war between the two
nations !' meaning France and England. This feeling
he seems indeed to have acted up to in every trans-
action ; but I sincerely trust and hope that his self-
interested views will, in this and in every other point, be
frustrated and rendered wholly abortive.
" I must now remark, Sir, that throughout my cor-
respondence with the Provisional Government, my ear-
nest desire has been, that the arguments I have adduced
in answer to their various representations, and in sup-
port of the different measures that I may have adopted,
should be submitted to you on your arrival, or earlier, if
the opportunities offered of forwarding my several letters
to you • indeed they were written with this sole inten-
tion, and I gave the copies of two of these letters to
Commodore Lavaud with the request that he would
transmit them to you on his reaching Valparaiso, as I
have been very anxious that you should be informed of
the view I have taken of the treaty made by you with
Queen Pomare and her Chiefs in September last ; and
this anxiety has been increased by my learning the
peculiar, and I may add, I believe, the unprecedented
circumstances which, as I have just represented, attended
the Sovereign's signature being procured to that docu-
, meat.

" These circumstances will, I consider, in accordance
with the opinions that have been held by the first writers
on international law, render this treaty void (46 isitio, for
the following reasons :
" Puffendorf (book iii., chap. 6, sec. 9) states, that—
" Promises made under fear, that is, under a vehe-
ment terror of the mind caused by a threatening of soma
grievous mischief, are evidently not binding.'
" And again, in section 10 of the same book and chap-
ter, he says:—

" Aristotle calls those only mixed, that is partly vo-
luntary and partly involuntary actions, which are under.
taken for the sake of declining some mischief which we
•ro like to suffer, such as throwing goods overboard in a
storm to preserve our lives.'
" And in the same section it is expressly said, that—
" ' Fear alone invalidates and destroys an obligation.'
(3). (See also book 1., chap. iv., sec. 9.)
" And here I should observe, Sir, that the evident mis-
chief that the Queen dreaded was your threat to fire on
her subjects if her. Majesty did not sign this treaty, or
pay into your hands the sum of 10,000 hard dollars
within a stipulated number of hours; whereas, this de-
mand of hard dollars was quite as impossible for the
Queen to fulfil, as must have been well known to the
Consul of France, as if you had stipulated for 10,000
rubies.

" Barbeyrac, who, you are aware, was the translator
of, and commentator on, the works of Grotius and Puf-
fendorf, and who, it is said, has been considered to have
approached the nearest to the true law of nations, gives
in his note (3) to the above extract from Puffendorf the
following quotation from Cicero:—
" ' Jam illis promissis standum non esse quis non
videt, glue coactus quis metu, (Luse deceptus dolo pro-
miserit? QUM quidem pleraque jure Prastorio liberantur
nonnulla legibus.' De Oft. L 1, c. 10; id est--' As for
promises extorted by fear and fraud, who sees not that
we are not obliged to keep them? The przetor himself
frees us from many of them, and the laws from others.'
" Further Barberac says in his note 5 to section x.,
p. 278 7
_ _ _

" We must then conclude that, by natural right, all
force, and every kind of violence, direct or indirect, alt
menaces, and in general all unlawful influence. which
oblige men, contrary to their inclination, to give their
consent, which otherwise they would not, takes away
that liberty which is necessary to make an engagement
valid, and consequently renders all promises and agree-
ments in such cases null and void.'

"Further, in isection xi. of the same book and chap-
ter (1. 2, book iii., chap. vi.) it is stated—
" Those promises, then, or pacts, we take to be in-
valid which a man is compelled to be engaged in by the
unjust force of the party to whom they are made; since
he who extorts anything from another by using unjust
terrors is, by the law of nations, bound to restore it, and
must, consequently, make
,good what the other person
loses by such a forced bargain.'
" And again, in the same section, it is stated, that—
" 'That which renders the contract unjust is the hard
fortune of the sufferer, not the person of the doer.'—' It
would be a foolish and idle way of acting, when we are
once got clear of the danger, to pay voluntarily what
we promised upon force.' And it is also said in this
section that—

" A promise made through the compulsion of fear
shall not be binding.
" And in section xiii., Puffendorf gives a quotation
from Dionys. Haiku, (1. viii., p. 509, in fin. Edit. Lips.),
wherein it is maintained that—
" Whatever is extorted from private men, or from
public states, by force and necessity, holds no longer
than the necessity itself continues.'
" Grotius also (lib. 2. c. xi. s. 7) says—
" That if he to whom the promise was made did ob-
tain it of the other party, by putting him in a fear,
though never so slight, he is obliged to release the pro-
miser if he desires it.'
Vette!, in book iv. chap. iv. S. 37, likewise maintains
the same principle, us he says, of a constrained or forced
submission :
If ever the plea of constraint may be alleged, it is
against an act which does not deserve the name of a
treaty of peace—against a forced submission to conditions
which are equillT offensive to justice and to all the du-
ties of humanity. And, further,—' If an unjust and ra-
pacious conqueror subdues a nation and forces her to
accept of hard, and ignominious, and unsupportable con-
ditions, necessity obliges her to submit ; but this appa-
rent tranquillity is not a peace; it is an oppression which
she endures only so long as she wants the means of
shaking it off, and against which men of spirit rise on
the first favourable opportunity.'
" And, again,—' Although the law of nations aims at
protecting the safety and peace of nations, by enjoining
the faithful observance of provinces, it does not favour
oppressors.'
" With these incontrovertible' data, it is, I contend,
quite impossible to maintain the validity of the treaty in
question, even supposing you had been furnished with
the express credentials from your Sovereign to conclude
it ; whereas, if I am rightly informed, you never in-
tended to have entered the harbour of Papeete, when
you appeared off it, in September last, had not your
Consul, on his visit to you, found some pretended causes
for your adopting the course which you at length deemed
it right to pursue.
" This course, I may be allowed to say, Sir, appears
the more extraordinary after the letters that were writ-
ten to Queen Pomare by Commodore Buglet, your im-
mediate predecessor in the command of the naval forces
of France in these seas, only six months before your ar-
rival at Otaheite, and those of Captain du Bouzec of
L'Aube,' written but a few weeks antecedent to your
coming here, and the copies of these are in my posses-
sion, in both of which were expressed the most perfect
•hL itoorephout, French Consul ,0.9/40ito.

. ,a ..,

satisfaction with all the last measures intrsued by the
Queen with regard to the subjects of the •ktench nation
in Otabeite.
" Amidst the variety of reflections, Sir, which the deli-
cate duties I have had to execute at Otaheite during the
last four months will hereafter create in me, that which
I shall ever pride myself the-mosi Capon will be the temper
and forbearance which I feel that I have uniformly
evinced, and this every disinterested person here will, I
am confident, confirm, in the• various difficulties, and
I may also add offences (as my letters, to which I have
called your attention, will prove); that have been ofered
towards me by the individual whom I charge with
being the sole cause of all those late misunderstandings
that have arisen in this island, and which, had I been
actuated with the same spirit, must, in my belief, have
produced a war between Great Britain and France. That
this may be:long averted is, Lain assured, the best de-
sire of the Governments of eacb, and should be that of
all who serve under them.

" I consider it right, that I should, now assure you;
Sir, that I am confident England seeks not—desires not
—to possess .a paramount influence in Otaheite. All
she seeks is .to see the Sovereign .of the island free and
independent, giying the same favour and protection to
subjects of every state, without showing undue partiality
to either. •
"I cannot terminate my letter 'Without conveying to
you my sense of the amicable disposition that has been
generally evinced by the commander of the naval forces
here, Captain Vrignati, for the maintenance of harmony
between' our respective flags; and, but for his praise-
worthy measures, I shall always
,believe that there would
have been a rupture between.ont two nations.
"June B.—Having just heard from Captain Gambier,
of the Satellite, that you are not likely, in his belief, to
come immediately to Otaheite, I will take leave to for-
ward this letter by Captain Vrignind ; and my best hope
is that it may be my good fortune to have the honour of
making your acquaintance at no. distant period, even
though I may not be fated to do so 0 Otaheite.—With
the highest consideration, I have the honour to be, Sir
your very obedient, very humble servant,
.‘ J. TOITP NICOLAS, Commodore,'