414	HAWAIIAN   ISLANDS.
annexation treaty if ratified by the Senate should be submitted here to 
a popular vote, hoping to stir up all the factional and irresponsible 
elements thus to defeat annexation, though none knows better than he 
that such a procedure here under existing conditions would be a farce 
and no test of the opinions of the responsible people of the islands.
Of course, the views of the English minister in this regard get to the 
public ears and the factional and irresponsible elements are stirred 
more or less by the Canadian, Australian, and American adventurers 
here, of the lottery and opium rings. I think the Provisional Govern- 
ment has answered the English minister very effectively by pointing 
him to the general course of the British Government in its numerous 
annexations of Pacific Islands as well as of other countries.
In my dispatch 74 I have given the special personal and family rea- 
sons why Minister Wodehouse wishes the Hawaiian monarchy restored 
and American ascendancy here weakened. Annexation alone will put 
an end to these ultra British intrigues and give Hawaii responsible 
government and great prosperity. 
I am, etc.,
JOHN L. STEVENS.
No. 91.]	Mr. Stevens to Mr. Gresham.
[Confidential ]
UNITED STATES LEGATION,
Honolulu, March 7, 1893.
SIR: By the American newspapers it appears, and I have the infor- 
mation from other sources, that a Mr. E. C. Macfarlane is in Washing- 
ton, professing to be an ardent American, sometimes claiming to be an 
annexationist, but avows himself hostile to the Hawaiian Provisional 
Government and to the course of the Hawaiian commissioners.
It is proper for me to inform the Department of State that this man 
is one of the firm of George Macfarlane & Co., referred to by my pre- 
decessor here, Minister Merrill, in his dispatch 78, to Secretary Bayard, 
of September 2, 1886, page 558 of printed volume of diplomatic docu- 
ments. Again, the minister refers to the same firm in his dispatch 138, 
of August 2, 1887, page 832, printed volume, by which it is seen that 
the firm was a party to defrauding the Hawaiian Government of more 
than $100,000 in negotiating a loan with a London house. For years 
this firm has been ultra English in its political affiliations and mercan- 
tile plans.
A few months since this E. C. Macfarlane, by intrigues and associa- 
tions became one of the recent Queen's ministers, minister of finance. 
So unsatisfactory was he to all the best members of the Legislature 
and to the business men of the Islands, that he remained in the min- 
istry but a few days, being voted out by the Legislature though the 
English minister, openly and by personal effort, and his wife more 
conspicuously in the legislative hall, worked to retain him. After 
Macfarlane was voted out, the English minister used the former as a 
go-between to the Queen to get her to appoint another pro-English 
cabinet, but the effort failed. This E. C. Macfarlane is referred to in 
my 70 and 71. This is the man who sought to get access to President 
Cleveland, at Lakewood, according to the New York and Washington 
papers, and is now posing as an American and is said to be asking a

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