Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
That treaty was unanimously ratified without amendment by the Senate and
President of the Republic of Hawaii on the 10th of September last, and only
awaits the favorable action of the American Senate to effect the complete
absorption of the Islands into the domain of the United States. What the
conditions of such a union shall be, the political relation thereof to the
United States, the character of the local administration, the quality and
degree of the elective franchise of the inhabitants, the extension of the
federal laws to the territory or the enactment of special laws to fit the
peculiar condition thereof, the regulation if need be of the labor system
therein, are all matters which the treaty has wisely relegated to the
Congress.
If the treaty is confirmed as every consideration of dignity and honor
requires, the wisdom of Congress will see to it that, avoiding abrupt
assimilation of elements perhaps hardly yet fitted to share in the highest
franchises of citizenship, and having due regard to the geographical
conditions, the most just provisions for self-rule in local matters with
the largest political liberties as an integral part of our Nation will be
accorded to the Hawaiians. No less is due to a people who, after nearly
five years of demonstrated capacity to fulfill the obligations of
self-governing statehood, come of their free will to merge their destinies
in our body-politic.
The questions which have arisen between Japan and Hawaii by reason of the
treatment of Japanese laborers emigrating to the Islands under the
Hawaiian-Japanese convention of 1888, are in a satisfactory stage of
settlement by negotiation. This Government has not been invited to mediate,
and on the other hand has sought no intervention in that matter, further
than to evince its kindliest disposition toward such a speedy and direct
adjustment by the two sovereign States in interest as shall comport with
equity and honor. It is gratifying to learn that the apprehensions at first
displayed on the part of Japan lest the cessation of Hawaii's national life
through annexation might impair privileges to which Japan honorably laid
claim, have given place to confidence in the uprightness of this
Government, and in the sincerity of its purpose to deal with all possible
ulterior questions in the broadest spirit of friendliness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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