The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1894-10-03
EX-MINISTER STEVENS.
A ROUsER FROM uAwAIIs OLD
SUPPORTER.
How stevens Sizes Up the Anti-American
Policy of Cleveland Annexation
Live Issue.


Opera House in Augusta, at which hun.
dreds Of leading citizens were present
and over which Hon. John l.. Stevens,
revered by Americans in Hawaii, presid-
ed. Speeches were made by ex-Speaker
Reed, Henry Cabot Lodge, Governor
Henry c. Cleaves, Hon. Harold NJ.
Sewall and others. In compliment to
the honored representative OF Hawaiian
American interests, the following con-
clusion of the opening remarks by Ex-
Minister Stevens are reproduced for the
benefit of Americans and annexationists
in Hawaii:
But there is another important ques.
ton as to which Cleveland and his
henchmen have made grotcsque and
shameful exhibition of themselves be-
fore their countrymen and the world,
by their antagonism to what jefferson,
jackson and Marcy held of the highest
value. Jefferson rejoiced at the over.
throw of monarchy which had for
centuries corrupted and oppressed a
brave people, who had been our friend
in a period of danger and suffering, and
he ardently desired the success of the
French republic and aided it with his
pen and his counsel. Cleveland eager
to repudiate the policy and acts of his
predecessors, fastened to manifest his
sympathy for "A corrupt, WORKOUT and
semi barbarous monarchy, and igno-
miniously conspired it to rule over an
intelligent amt patriotic American
colony, and thus to put in peril the
great American interests which our
best American statesmen had carefully
guarded for more than half a century.
jefferson threw his entire official influ-
ence to annex a foreign territory, whose
possession he justly regarded necessary
to American development and to the
prosperity of the great Mississippi val
ley, and to prevent foreign domination
at the mouth of that great river.
Cleveland. to the degree of conspiracy,
treachery and startling efforts of usurp-
alton, sought to prevent the annexation
of Hawaii, with its valuable resources,
its American civilization created by the
heroic sacrifices of American men and
women, its splendid Pearl Harbor,
which our ablest statesmen and our
highest military and naval officers, In
the language of Senator Morgan, chair
man of the Foreign Relations Commit
tee, declare to be the Gibralter of the
North Pacific, and a controlling center
of the vast future of American COM
mercial interests and of great future
events vitality effecting the destiny of
the American nation. To have shown
such perfidy to national honor, such
treason to national interests, in past
times has often sent official representa-
tives to infamy, to exile, and sometimes
to the scatfold.
1t will be admitted, however, think
few will dispute it-that Cleveland and
his cuckoo henchmen have made one re
markable effort OF constructive states
mdRship. Let them have full credit OF
this. Thinking to exlinguish the rising
American Republic OF Hawaii by secret
executive word and IA single stroke OF his
official pen, he has made himself respon-
sible for one of the most remarkable
procedures in American history. In the
blindness of his self-conceit and want OF
moral sense and OF American sentiment,
he created monstrous fiction, by the
aid of which he thought to undo the
work of many years OF the best Ameri-
can craftsmanship OF his predecessors.
By liberal use of tins romance of
lies he thought to restore worn-out,
corrupt barbaric monarchy over peo-
pie whose leading men are more than
his equals in intellectual caliber and his
superiors mall the graces of life and
whose every instinct, hopes and inter
ests are with the land of their fathers.
This attempt to blot out the patriotic
efforts of worthy people compelled to
create a better government, this at
tempt to overthrow them by the
pressure of deceptive diplomacy and
. ~ A nd
bayonets. signally failed. 1t failed be.
cause of the American and patriotic
convictions, the grit and courage of the
Spartan band in possession of affairs at
Honolulu. These brave men en-
Outraged by women brave as they, re-
solved to die at their posts rather than
to have Hawaii forced back into the
unworthy arms of Liliuokalani and her
gang of adventures and knaves
1t was not possible to execute it with
the promptness and reckless vigor
which such a scheme of political crime
must be executed, as was executed by
that known rs the crime of December,
when Louis Napoleon strangled in blood
the French republic in a single night.
Menaced for days with the bayonets and
the cannon of the United States. called
in the name OF great Government to
surrender their power to fallen mon
arch who had vowed to behead them
and to punish their children with per-
petual Punishment, they stood firm as
granite to their cause. Behind their
brick walls, their breast work of sand
bags, and their eighteen hundred rifles
that noble band, nerved by common
purpose, were ready to do what their
grandfathers did behind the stone walls
81 1 nd .
Bunker Hill. In vain it was attempted
to seduce them, to intmdate or to coax
them. Cleveland did not dare to give
the order to fire upon them. Thus our
naval men, ever proud OF their country's
honor, were spared work from which
they shrank with adherence. Thus
the foul scheme of ignorance and i'm
becility, OF pushing the Islands into the
arms OF our foreign rivals and of sacri-
fcing the invaluable possession which
had logically and honorably drifted to
our hands, signally failed.
The splendid opportunity has been
saved to us-saved to the United States
by the men whom our Government,
through dark and weary weeks, sought
to dishonor and to destroy. Thanks to
God and to the favoring stars of human
liberty, in the place of that grOtesque
and monumental blunder of monarch
cal restoration, has arisen a well.
modelled republic-It has come up like q
goddess amid the waves OF the great
sea, serene in its beauty in its promise
and in It's noble selG-cOmmand.
Nay-uot thus suddenly created. Ii
was many years growing into life and
muscle. More than seventy years ago,
when Asa ThursIon and his associate
mia