REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE.

To the PRESIDENT :

In transmitting to the President, with a view to laying it before the Senate, the general act concerning affairs in the Samoan Islands, which was signed at Berlin on June 14, 1889, the Secretary of State has the honor to make the following observations touching the negotiation of that instrument!

The correspondence transmitted to Congress by President Cleveland on the 8th of February last set forth the acceptance by the Government of the United States of the proposal of Prince Bismarck for the resumption at Berlin of the conference of representatives of the United States, Great Britain, and Germany for the pacific adjustment of affairs in Samoa, which was begun in Washington on June 21, 1887, and suspended on the 26th of the following month.

In a later communication, confidentially addressed to the Senate on the 27th of February last, the President made known the reasons which rendered it advisable to leave to the administration then about to assume office the appointment of representatives of the United States at such renewed conferences:

Un the 14th of March last; the President, nominated, and on the 18th of the same month appointed, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, John A. Kasson, of Iowa; William Walter Phelps, of New Jersey, and George H. Bates, of Delaware, to be Commissioners to represent the United States at the conference; and on April 12 following full powers were conferred upon the persons so appointed to meet the Commissioners to be appointed on behalf of Germany and Great Britain for the purpose of considering and adjusting in a friendly spirit all or any questions which should come before the said conference relating to or growing out of the condition of affairs which had lately existed and might still exist in the Samoan Islands affecting the rights, respectively, of the three countries, or their citizens or subjects, in those islands. The Commissioners received ample instructions touching the nature and scope of the questions which it was thought would demand the attention of the conference, and the views of the President as to the steps proper to be advocated by the United States in settlement of all pending questions connected with Samoa. They were instructed to be governed in the fulfillment of their mission by the most earnest assurance that the Government of the United States desired a speedy and amicable solution of all the questions involved; that while it would steadily maintain its full equality of right and consideration in any disposition of these questions, it was as much influenced by an anxious desire to secure to the people of Samoa the conditions of a healthy, prosperous, and civilized life as it was bound by its duty to protect the rights and interests of its own citizens wherever their spirit of lawful enterprise might carry them; that, in the co-operation of the three Governments, the President hoped and believed that frank and friendly consultation would strengthen their respect for each other, and the result prove that it was not the wish of any of them to subordinate the rights of the native Samoans to the exigencies of a grasping commerce or to the political ambition of territorial extension on the part of any one of the powers maintaining treaty relations with them. They were further instructed that in consenting, at the request of the Emperor of Germany, to re open, at Berlin, the adjourned proceedings of the Conference

of Washington of 1887, the President, while thus manifesting his entire confidence in the motives and purposes of the German Government, desired it to be borne in mind that the step was the continuance merely of the efforts already made toward an adjustment of pending questions, and not the initiation of a new conference on another basis, inasmuch as the Government of the United States could not admit the conditions directly influencing the deliberations of the Conference of Washington to have been changed by any subsequent occurrences in the South Pacific.

The subjects as to which the Commissioners were instructed fell naturally under five heads:

(1) They were directed to ask the restoration of the status quo, in order that the disturbance of the equal rights of the powers in Samoa which had been caused by the forcible intervention of Germany and the deportation of Malietoa Laupepa might be removed, and their footing of equality restored. While the President was unwilling to consider that action of Germany, which immediately followed the suspension of the conferences at Washington, as intentionally derogatory either to the dignity or the interests of the other treaty powers, yet he could not but regard it, under the circumstances, as an abrupt breach of the joint relations of the three powers to each other and to the Government of Samoa, and impossible to reconcile with the frank and friendly declaration of the German Government, preliminary to the meeting of the conference of 1887, that it intended to maintain the status as it had theretofore existed and had neither interest nor desire to change an arrangement found satisfactory to the three Governments. The failure to restore that condition under which only, as it seemed to the President, a free choice could be made by the Samoans would not only seriously complicate, but might possibly endanger, that prompt and friendly solution which all the treaty powers so earnestly desired and which is so vital to the safety and prosperity of Samoa itself. Even were it urged that the forcible intervention of Germany had had consequences which could not be disregarded because impossible to undo, the restoration of the status quo appeared necessary to place the powers on that footing of equality which would enable them to provide such future changes as justice and unselfish interest might commend. The restoration of the status quo, however, was not to be submitted as an ultimatum which would close the conference or prevent the President from considering any plan put forward as a substitute.

(2) The organization of a stable governmental system for the islands, whereby native independence and autonomy should be preserved free from the control or the preponderating influence of any foreign government; the assistance of the United States, and equally of Germany and Great Britain, to be given to the natives of Samoa to form and administer their own Government. The President was unable to see how the suggested appointment of a governing adviser, or mandatory, by one of the powers, upon the avowed ground of supposed greater interests, could preserve that absolute equality of consideration which could alone justify the co-operation of the treaty powers, or could protect with adequate security the commercial interests of the separate powers, which are in fact the motive and the purpose of any co-operation. The obligation of the Government of the United States in the South Pacific is to protect the rights and interests of our citizens there resident and engaged in any lawful pursuit. It has no desire to dominate, and every wish to develop and strengthen a stable and just government, free from all occasions of trouble arising from, and fostered into, mischievous activity by the avarice and eagerness of competing merchants and land

speculators and the irregular conduct of foreign officials who are, per haps naturally and excusably but most injudiciously, sympathetic with the prejudices and immediate interests of their resident countrymen. Besides these evils necessarily attending the subordination of Samoan independence to any one predominant alien interest, the United States could not consent to the institution of any form of gov ernment in those islands, subject, directly or indirectly, to influences which in the contingencies of the future might check or control the use or development of the right acquired on the part of the United States. by lawful treaty to establish a naval station at Pago-Fago and to control its harbor to that end.

Bearing these essential points in mind, it was impressed upon the Commissioners that any intervention of the three powers, which the existing complications might make necessary for administering the Government of Samoa, should be temporary merely, and avowedly preparatory to the restoration of as complete independence and autonomy as is practicable in those islands.

(3) The President was further of opinion that, in any arrangement for the establishment of order and stability in Samoa, too much importance could not be given to the subject of the adjustment of claims and titles to land on the part of foreigners already amounting to more than the whole area of the group and conflicting to a degree involving continual disputes. It was desirable that the ownership of all the lands in the islands should be ascertained and registered; that rules for the transfer of title should be established, with safeguards against transfers for improper or insufficient considerations; and that, if necessary, a composition should be effected whereby a reasonable proportion of the territory might be saved to the natives. The settlement of the land question on some such equitable and comprehensive bases would give the best possible assurance for the stability and success of any government to be established, because removing the main incentive to its disturbance.

(4) In connection with the subject of land tenure, the necessity of prohibiting or regulating the importation and sale of fire-arms and alcoholic liquors naturally suggested itself, inasmuch as many of the land claims had, without doubt, been obtained by ministering to the weakness and passions of the natives by supplying them with those articles. This reproach to civilization should be removed, either by separate or joint adoption of stringent regulations on the subject.

(5) The question of a municipal administration of Apia, as a foreign settlement, under due reservation of extraterritorial rights, did not come within the scope of specific instructions, inasmuch as a system of joint municipal government, through the consular representation of the three powers, had for several years operated with satisfaction under the municipal convention of Apia, signed by the representatives of the United States, Germany, and Great Britian September 2, 1879. The Government of the United States had, indeed, not become formally a contracting party to that convention through ratification, exchange, and proclamation thereof, but the constant participation of the American consul in the tripartite scheme of foreign government thereby provided gave to the convention itself full recognition, and to the principle involved an abundant sanction. Having no special suggestions to make in this regard, and entertaining confidence in the impartial justice of any measure of foreign municipal control which might incidentally come before the conference, the subject was left to the representatives of the three treaty powers with merely a reference to the indisputable fact that peace and order had been promoted in the islands by the estab