Aaron S. Daggett to Randall L. Gibson, March 5, 1884

Mr. Daggett to Mr. Gibson.

Sir: Referring to your letter of the 19th of December last, relating to the granting by the Hawaiian Government of special and exclusive privileges to the Oceanic Steamship Company in the transportation of Chinese laborers to these islands, I have the honor to advise your excellency that I am now possessed of the specific conclusions of my Government on the subject, with a full consideration of the correspondence in connection therewith between your excellency and this legation.

Without reviewing the entire ground covered by the controversy, I beg respectfully to say that the right claimed by your excellency for Hawaii, under its treaty relations with the United States, to grant exclusive privileges for the transportation of Chinese passengers to these islands, either for sanitary or other reasons, cannot be admitted by my Government. As has already been brought to your excellency’s attention, the real question involved is not the grievance of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company or of any other American line of steamships, nor the relative rights of such lines, however they may be incidentally affected.

It is strictly an international question between the two Governments, involving the construction or interpretation of Article VI of the treaty of 1849, which guarantees to “steam-vessels of the United States “carrying its mails the right to freely enter Hawaiian ports and “land passengers and their baggage.” All steam-vessels of the United States carrying its mails are entitled to this privilege, without regard to the lines to which they may belong.

The sovereign right of Hawaii to prohibit the immigration of Chinese to its shores is not questioned, and American steamships, of whatever line, would be bound to respect such prohibition; but if Chinese immigrants are permitted to come to Hawaii, either indiscriminately or in limited numbers, or under any other condition that may be imposed by the laws or regulations of the Kingdom, then such immigrants are passengers within the meaning of Article VI of the treaty of 1849, and all American steamships carrying the mails possess an undoubted right to take and land them as passengers in any of the ports of Hawaii, in accordance with treaty stipulation.

To accord an exclusive right to carry such passengers either to Hawaiian vessels, to vessels of a nation foreign to both the United States and Hawaii, or to vessels of any particular line, whether American, Hawaiian, or foreign, would be equally a discrimination against American steam-vessels, and would be held by my Government to be a violation of the plain letter of Article VI of the treaty of 1849; and neither would my judgment counsel nor my instructions permit me to assent to an interpretation giving warrant to any such discrimination.

I beg again to assure your excellency that no exclusive privilege is claimed for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. On the contrary, the granting of such a privilege to that or any other line would be quite as objectionable as the discrimination now sought to be made in favor of the Oceanic Steamship Company.

What is asked is that all American steamships, of whatever line, shall, with respect to the carrying trade and within the limitations of treaty provisions, be placed on an equality with each other, with the vessels of the most favored nation, and with the vessels of the Hawaiian Kingdom. This is the only interpretation of the treaty which seems to be just; the only interpretation which my Government is prepared to assent to; and in connection with it the question of sanitary measures or the rights of any particular line of steamships cannot be considered. The treaty must be interpreted in harmony with its spirit and its language, and so long as its provisions are held to be binding the observance of its covenants cannot justly or in good faith be contravened or modified by either party to meet a sanitary or other emergency.

To state the point directly, the exclusive privilege already or about to be granted to the Oceanic Steamship Company is conceived by my Government to be an unjust discrimination against all other American steamships carrying the mails between the eastern and western shores of the Pacific Ocean; that it is in contravention of the provisions of the treaty of 1849; and the President hopes, as he believes, that the Hawaiian Government, noted no less for its high intelligence than for its sense of justice, will speedily adopt the proper measures to rescind the privilege, if granted, and if not granted, to prevent its fulfillment.

I have, &c.,