The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1877-11-24
DINNER by the AMERICAN MINISTER.

General Comfy entertained Il party of gentle
men on the evening of Monday, November 10, at
the hawaiian Hotel. among whom were many
of the elite of our city. His Majesty of course
was the guest of the evening, and without men
tioning, as has our contemporary the Gazette,
the names of everybody who was present on the
pleasant occasion, we are enabled to give more
fully than did that Journal, n report of the
speeches made on the somewhat noteworthy even
ing to which we refer.
After the regular courses had been removed,
the toasts of the evening were proposed, and
duly responded to, in the order as follows
s His Majesty the King" Said DIR. j.. NJ.
Smith, Minister of the Interior and Acting
Minister of Foreign Relations
MIR. MINISTER Il have the honor TO acknowl-
edge, in the name of His Majesty, the toast pro-
posed by you, and just hOnOred by your guests, the
gentlemen here present. Accredited to this country
as you are, by 4 near and friendly Power, His Maj
jesty views the commencement of your official resi-
dence with high regard, and allow me TO hope, as
this residence lengthens from days into months,
and months into years, that it may become increas.
ingly agreeable and pleasant TO you, and that as
you become more intimately acquainted with our
affairs, you will find reasons TO foster, strengthen
and enlarge the friendly relations which have so
happily subsisted between our respective countries.
We, as a Government, are happy TO welcome you
to our shores, and propose to meet you on all ques-
tions which may arise, and all discussion which
may come up, in the most frank and cordial spirit,
and / may add Tor myself personally, and for my
fellow residents of these Islands, that We are happy
to welcome you here, to our homes and families,
to our social circles, and to those intimate relations
of neighbor and friend, which when sympathetic
and true, tend to make life cheerful, bright and
agreeable.
toast which l shall shortly have the honor to pro-
pose, makes it proper that 1 should advert to the
country which His EXcellency has come hither to
represent, and which in the course of events has
become our nearest %neighbOr. The time was, in
the not far distant past, when the United States was
as far from us, commercially speaking, as England,
or France, or Germany-when the little commerce
we had with all these countries found its way to or
from us BY the long and tedions route via Cape
Horn; when the Hawaiian Islands, socially and
commercially, were but as specks on the broad eX-
panse of the distant Pacific Ocean. These Islands,
to the view of :he merchant and the citizen of New
Bedford, were but a group to be reached after long
and patient v~Oyaging, profitable only as consum-
ing a small amount of goods, useful as a stopping
place for cruising ships, or interesting as atfording
an illustration of the triumph and conqueriug power
of Christianity
But the march of events have wonderfully changed
all this. He would have been a bold prophet who,
thirty years ago, should have ventured to predict
what has actually came to pass-who should have
moved the United States from the Atlantic to the
Pacific board, aud have settled on the same q large,
thrifty and vigorous population. Yet this miracle
has been accomplished. When the marvellous an
was made to the people OF the Eastern
Sierras gold might be had for the picking of it up
from the soil, a mighty wave of emigration flowed
across the Isthmus of Panama-rushed in a steady
III dCIOSS liz HlallS d1d thS u |
-welled up from South and North and spread out
upon the plains, hills and valleys of California, until
as il were in q day, villages, towns and cities sprang
existence; populous and well organized States
were formed on soil which, for centuries, had hardly
felt the foot of human beings, and in an incredibly
short time we viewed the fair form of American
Liberty and American institutions seated on the
summit of the Sierras, her feet laved by the blue
waters of the Pacific, and her eyes turned to the
of the Occident.
By this march westward the United States moved
1000 miles nearer -.4waii-commercially, more than
100 days nearer-and stretched out TO US a helping
hand, opening for Us a new vista of commercial en-
terprise and the profitable exchange OF products.
This march has placed at our command an available
it has given TO us more than q million of
people as consumers of the tropical products of our
soil, and the commercial prosperity of Hawaii has
become ~intimatel connected with the prosperity of
the Pacific States.
/ remember years ago that Gen. Miller, the then
British Consul General, was accustomed to speak
of the commerce of Hawaii as bounded in expan-
sion, TO Honolulu becoming the entTepot for British
American goods. which, finding their way into
the Pacific via Cape Horn, should from this port be
to the inhabitants of the Spanish and
Coast. This was not a large prospect,
but what do We see now? Honolulu not an entire
pot merely of q petty trade, but the halfway house