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

OTAHEITE,

The following are copies of the letters addressed by
Queen Pomare to Admiral Dupetit Thouars and to the
King of the French :

" QUEEN POMARE TO ADMIRAL DUPETIT THOUARS.
" Papete, Nov. 5, 1843.
" Monsieur l'Amiral—l have receieved the letter which
you have written to me. You suppose that I allow myself
to be guided by the counsels of persons who surround
me, who are not favourable to the plans of your country,
you say, and nho may even draw down great misfor-
tunes upon myself and my people. You are entirely
mistaken—l act upon my own impulse alone. As to the
flag which I have adopted, if it has a crown upon it, it is
because I desired that it should be, in order that this
emblem might call to mind that of my sovereignty ; and
such is the motive why I desire to retain it.
" I desire to see my flag flying as it has done, without
any change being made in it. Nothing to this effect is
stipulated in the treaty ; and consequently I have no-
thing to fear. The only motive which induced me to
give my signature on the 9th of September, 1842, was
the fear of exposing my people to some evil

" Receive, &c.,

" POMARE."

" QUEEN POMARE TO ADMIRAL DUPETIT THOURAS.

" 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 THOURAS.
" 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
♦vas 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 haire 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 place 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 power 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.
" Petitient -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 lutq, with arms in his hands, taken possession of
Illy 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
my 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
Ts 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,
awl restore me to my sovereignty and the government of
ray 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-
- plained to you fully the exact relation in which
Great 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
Queen 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 dociunents may be laid
before you.
"By this correspondence you will observe, Sir, the
measures that I have pursued relative to the Queen
Pomare 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 offer 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-
nand 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. Vrignaml.
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
ii9vereignty which was confirmed to her Majesty 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 here, and even before I had anchored, I re-
ceived a letter from the Queen, in which she threw her-
s?' f wholly on the protection of Great Britain, claiming
the fulfilment of those solemn assurances which had
beenl. from time to time, made 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
omare 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-
jesty's ostensible protector, that of Great Britain has
virtually executed this duty. But, Sir, even allowing
this to be the fact, I feel arid 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-
ances of 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 treaty differently from the Queen and myself, yet I
(confidently trust that I have acted rightly under the cir-
ammstances in which I have been placed, it hiving been
imy most anxious desire to do this ; indeed, so sincerely
do I hope that I shall have merited the approbation of
ray Government, that were I in a precisely similar posi-
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 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
4-vibjects solely, and this right was irrefutably secured
te, her Majesty by the treaty against which she so loudly
cntoplains, and which, if ratified by your Government,
Witt at once take from the Queen all her attributes as
regards her foreign relations.