Boisrond Canal to the Haytian House of Representatives, August 13, 1877

Message of President Canal to the Haytian House of Representatives.

(Seventy-fourth year of Independence.)

Boisrond Canal, President of Hayti, to the House of Representatives:

Messieurs les Députés: At the very moment when two successive votes seemed to establish that the cabinet had all the confidence of the house, when there did not exist between the powers any appearance of dissidence, an unforeseen vote, on a simple question of propriety, provoked a ministerial crisis, without any previous explanation being demanded of those who were attacked.

This situation, as you easily understand it, is so much the more embarrassing as the session is coming to an end, and the budgets are not even voted. A new ministry, called in similar circumstances, would necessarily need a certain delay to study these budgets and to discuss them before the chambers.

In order to obviate such an inconvenience and to obey the law of majorities observed everywhere in parliamentary countries, my choice would necessarily fall on the men who were acquainted with the affairs of the country, and who would come from the very midst of the assembly whose vote overthrew the cabinet. Moreover, the order of the day of the chamber left me no other alternative; it is said, in fact, on the one hand, that the budgets presented are subversive of all that is serious in the handling of public revenues; and, on the other hand, that the chamber saw itself in the obligation to make them over again. It logically followed that the member of the chamber who had drawn up and proposed this order of the day, could not, in view of his patriotism, refuse to come and aid in drawing up a budget serious and hereafter conformable to the principles which he invoked Against my ministry.

I therefore called the deputy Paul, and left him all latitude to form a cabinet of his own choice. I regret to announce to you that he thought it best to shun the consequences of the vote which he had provoked. As chief of the state I must obey parliamentary usages in accepting the resignation of my ministers who seem to have lost the confidence of the chamber. But is not this obligation reciprocal, and is there not, for the authors of the ministerial crisis, an altogether imperious duty not to decline the responsibility and the consequences of their acts? Otherwise ministerial crises will unceasingly succeed one another, and my government will soon be reduced to the deplorable situation of no longer being able to find, to serve it, men possessing the guarantee required by the assembly itself.

I call your most serious attention, Messieurs, to the condition in which similar proceedings place the government. I would not have had to raise this question if the deputy Paul had accepted the portfolio which was offered to him; but in the face of his refusal, I can explain to myself less and less how the assembly could pass a vote which provokes the retirement of the ministry, without giving to the ministers time and opportunity to be heard, so as to determine and define mutual responsibilities. It is a regrettable precipitation which the legitimate susceptibilities of a great body could undoubtedly justify, but which its wisdom and justice are called to repair in finding the equitable solution to a situation equally embarrassing for the two powers.

Receive, Messieurs les Députés, the assurances of my very high consideration.