Aaron S. Daggett to Randall L. Gibson, June 6, 1884

Mr. Daggett to Mr. Gibson.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your excellency’s note of yesterday, conveying your acceptance of the position that the payment of Hawaiian customs duties in foreign silver of low commercial value, as may be done through existing methods, “‘is a manifest departure from the intention of the treaty—a departure which the Government has no desire to countenance,” and the further information that the Legislative Assembly has now under consideration a measure providing for the collection of customs duties in gold coin, upon which you hope to apprise me of favorable action “in the Course of a few days.”

Allow me to repeat to your excellency that the collection of customs duties in foreign silver, as it now rates with gold, is not merely a lessening of duty charges from 10 per cent, to 9, but substantially a reduction from 10 per cent, to the per cent, of difference between such silver and gold in exchange for each other, and that the “silver standard “of the law of 1872, which was in force at the time of the ratification of the treaty of 1875, was specifically United States silver, to the collection of duties in which to-day no valid objection could be urged.

Thanking your excellency for the very just and liberal spirit in which, after full explanation, you have met my suggestions in the matter,

I have, &c.,