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Blount Report: Affairs in Hawaii

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               HAWAIIAN   ISLANDS.				1297
principally to the Portuguese element, who form a large but ignorant and vicious part of our population; and this 
alone constitutes a permanent menace to the security and peace of the community.
(6) Several clubs and leagues, composed mostly of Germane, Portuguese, and Scandinavians, with really very few 
American citizens, have been called into existence for the support of the revolutionary government, and these 
organizations, with socialistic tendencies, have become an uncontrollable power, this fact being recognized and 
admitted by the executive council, who are intimidated by their clamors for the dismissal from public service of all 
Hawaiian or Hawaiian born subjects, to be replaced by the newly arrived adventurers, at their nomination.
(7) These clubs and their organs have repeatedly threatened murder, violence, and deportation against all those not 
in sympathy with the present state of things, and the police being in their control, intimidation is a common weapon, 
under various forms, even that of nocturnal searches in the residences of peaceful citizens, so that, were it not for the 
presence in port of foreign men-of-war, the population would be living under a hopeless reign of terror.
(8) The situation may be summed up by saying that never before in these islands, under what our filibusterers are 
pleased to refer to as the rule of heathenism, have we had such an unruly, despotic, unrepresentative, and 
squandering government, whose chief supporters are from the disorderly and adventurous foreign element, not from 
the natural inhabitants with families and property. And never before have the lives and peace of inoffensive citizens 
been so jeopardized, all of this under the pretense of American peace and civilization!!!
The above is but a faint outline of what the Hawaiian have suffered and are now suffering under the regime imposed 
on them by the alleged Christians of Mr. Stevens's following. And while the Hawaiians, disarmed by American 
intervention, have been patiently and peacefully waiting the judgment of your administration, the Provisional 
Government, actually under American protection, have diligently employed the long delay and used the people's 
money in fortifying themselves. They have grown desperate, so that when the arbitration of the United States is 
decided against them, those very men who appealed to America and claimed American citizenship for the 
furtherance of their selfish ends, turn around ready with their alien soldiers imported for the purpose to fight against 
their own Government and the soldiers of their nation. These unholy "patriots" are ready and willing to commit, 
against their own country, the crimes of rebellion and high treason, all the more heinous in this case, since the 
Hawaiians, who might have some right to fight in their own country for their own independence, have always 
declared their unchangeable resolution not to lift an aggressive hand against the great nation which, in the past, has 
so befriended Hawaii, and their readiness to abide by its decision, be that what it may.
Will it now appear a wonder that the Provisional Government have rendered themselves odious to all classes except 
their immediate supporters?
We shall not dwell on the fact that the Provisional Government have never been a legally constituted administration, 
but merely a temporary de facto police organization to preserve the peace pending the action of the United States; 
their power could only come from the people, who have not been consulted, because a public meeting of loss than 
1,000 foreigners, mostly nonvoters, out of a total voting population of 13,000 and a total number of inhabitants of 
92,000 can not be said to constitute the nation.
Yet we hear that the principal objection raised, by otherwise well-meaning Americans, against your excellency's 
policy of doing justice to our cause is the apparent inconsistency of a republican form of government restoring a 
monarchy. But we claim that our case is really a question of right and equity, and not one of a form of government; 
it is the matter of a peaceful monarchy, friendly to the United States, invaded by the hostile forces of that Republic 
to assist a revolutionary junta who verily intended to use America only as a convenient cat's-paw for their personal 
interests.
The principle of monarchical government may be distasteful to the radical democracy of America. But it is the 
chosen and preferred form of the Hawaiian people, under which, with its constitutional limitations, they and the 
foreign settlers have prospered and enjoyed, equally as well as any Republic, all the advantages and democratic 
privileges of popular government. Why should the Americans in Hawaii, who constitute only the small portion of 2 
.14 per cent of our population, or the people in America, 2,000 miles away, object to a monarchical form of 
government in Hawaii, popular with the great majority of the population who have here their only home and 
country?
Therefore the Hawaiians, as a nation, appeal for justice and redress to the impartiality of the American nation, in 
whose honor, integrity, and love of fair play we have so long and so patiently trusted. As peaceful and law-abiding 
citizens, ever ready to submit to the constitutional rule of the majority, duly expressed through

F R 94-APP II--82

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