Mr. Hay to Mr. Hart. [Telegram.] DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, December 17, 1898. Press for immediate payment of Star and Herald claim. Mr. Hay to Mr. Hart. [Telegram.] DEPARTMENT OF STATE, HAY. Washington, January 9, 1899. Press payment Star and Herald claim. Mr. Hart to Mr. Hay. [Telegram.] HAY. BOGOTÁ, January 21, 1899 (January 23, 1899). Referring to the Panama claim, have accepted offer to pay $30,000 in three equal installments, February 10, April 10, and June 10, in drafts at sixty days. Best that could be done in desperate financial situation. HART. Mr. Hay to Mr. Hart. [Telegram.] DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, January 23, 1899. Your cablegram reporting the acceptance offer $30,000 Star and Herald claim in three installments, February 10, April 10, and June 10, in drafts at sixty days, approved. Congratulations. Mr. Hart to Mr. Hay. HAY. No. 170.] LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Bogotá, February 3, 1899. SIR: I have the honor to forward herewith copy of a recent note passed to the Colombian foreign office and translation of the reply thereto of the Colombian minister of foreign affairs. The Department will observe that there has been other correspondence, but since the matter is terminated I have thought it unnecessary to forward more than the two notes herein inclosed. The Colombian foreign office put in a long protest based on the arguments with which the Department is already familiar. To these arguments I did not think it necessary to reply, as in an interview with the minister of foreign affairs we had already settled the matter, in the terms set forth in the inclosed correspondence, of which settlement I promptly advised the Department by cable. If the Department so desire the correspondence not copied and not translated will be forward promptly on its suggestion to this effect. CHAS. BURDETT HART. I am, etc., [Inclosure 1.] Mr. Hart to Mr. Marquez. LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your excellency's polite note of January 25, 1899, in which I am advised that your excellency's Government accepts the offer of my Government to receive in full satisfaction of the Panama Star and Herald claim the sum of $30,000 United States gold. According to my understanding of the arrangement agreed upon between your excellency and myself, in the recent interview which I had the honor to have with your excellency on the subject, the sum above named is to be paid as follows, in drafts on New York at sixty days from sight: one draft for $10,000 on February 10, 1899; one draft for $10,000 on April 10, 1899; and one draft for $10,000 on June 10, 1899. I shall be glad if your excellency will kindly confirm this understanding. I observe that in the note to which I now have the honor to reply your excellency embraces the opportunity to make a new protest against this claim. I observe also that the new protest is sought to be supported by arguments which have heretofore been advanced by your excellency's Government in support of its contention and which have been replied to at length on the part of my Government. Since the basis of settlement has been reached and the terms of payment agreed upon, I do not think it necessary to present again the arguments by which my Government has demonstrated the wrong and injustice of the order suspending the publication of the Panama Star and Herald, and sustained the justice of the claim for damages resulting from that arbitrary and unjustifiable act. I embrace this opportunity to renew, etc., CHARLES BURDETT HART. [Inclosure 2.] Mr. Marquez to Mr. Hart. [Translation.] BOGOTA, January 30, 1899. SIR: On the 21st instant I addressed to the minister of the treasury the following communication: I have the honor to inform your excellency that, in accord with the determination of the council of ministers on the 19th instant, it has been resolved to proceed with the definitive arrangement of the claim which the Government of the United States has been sustaining in favor of the old Panama Star and Herald Company for the suspension of that newspaper, ordered by the civil and military governor of Panama in the year 1886. The said arrangement is perfected and the claim terminated according to the Republic's acceptation of the offer which the said Government has presented through its diplomatic representative in this capital, which is that the amount of the said claim, which was originally fixed in $91,000, is reduced to $30,000, which, according to the agreement with the minister of the United States, will be paid to him in drafts at sixty days' sight, as follows: The 10th day of February next. The 10th day of April of this year an equal sum.... $10,000 10,000 10,000 $30,000 Begging that your excellency may be good enough to make the necessary arrangements to the end that these payments of which this communication treats may be made in the form as I have described, etc. The preceding communication being in entire accord with the oral agreement which I had occasion to bring to a conclusion with your excellency to terminate the claim in question, and having set forth in my former dispatch addressed to your excellency the proper protest against that demand, I refer to your excellency's note of the 28th instant, in which you ask for the ratification of the said agreement. I offer to your excellency the assurance, etc., FR 99- -16 CARLOS CUERVO MARQUEZ. DOMINICAN REPUBLIC. ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT HEUREAUX, AND REVOLUTION IN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC. Mr. Powell to Mr. Hay. [Telegram.] PORT AU PRINCE, July 27, 1899. Heureaux has been assassinated. Further information later. POWELL. The President to the President of the Dominican Republic. [Telegram.] DEPARTMENT OF STATE, In the name of the American people, and in my own, I offer to your excellency and the Dominican nation most sincere condolences by reason of the death of President Heureaux. WILLIAM MCKINLEY, Mr. Powell to Mr. Hay. No. 144.] LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, SIR: I respectfully report to the Department the death of Gen. Ulysses Heureaux, the President of this Republic, and the cause that leď up to the same. Early in March, 1898, the President finding the financial situation becoming critical, the revenue of the country constantly decreasing while the expenditures were increasing, brought in part about by the urgent necessities of the Government on the one hand, on the other the payment of certain large claims that were pressing upon him by the foreign Governments; to relieve the situation he obtained from the commerce (merchants) several large loans at a high rate of interest. When the time came to repay these loans, he was unable to do so. then endeavored to obtain other loans to cancel those he had already received; in this he was unsuccessful. He These loans had been made to him by the leading merchants in the foreign trade, principally those engaged in the sugar interests surrounding Santo Domingo City and Macoris. Finding it impossible to meet the loans, and the situation becoming more and more grave, as a relief to the smaller merchants and to the country people, he caused to have circulated a large amount of paper currency, to the amount of $4,000,000. There was no guarantee in regard to its redemption, and both merchants and people refused to receive it, except at a very heavy discount. Instead of this measure being a relief, it only complicated matters and rendered it more difficult to adjust. Its primary object being to relieve the situation in the cities of Santo Domingo and Macoris, whose main industry was in the expor tation of sugar, the other parts of the Republics were doing fairly well and did not need the paper money, as their products were of a more diversified character. The situation became such that the country people refused to bring to market their produce. The large planters, on their part, employing a large number of men, bought provisions in the States and sold it at a slight advance to their employees this of course still further reduced the amount of money in circulation and depreciated the paper currency more. The smaller shopkeepers, the middle and laboring class, not in the employ of the planters, felt the full force of this depreciated currency. So grave did the situation become that for ten days Santo Domingo was without fresh meat and vegetables. Matters became a little better when the President informed the public that this money would be redeemed in gold July 1, 1899, at the rate of three dollars (paper) to one in gold. He hoped to bring this about by a loan, which he was about to obtain in England, through one of the banks in London, by which he was to receive about $2,000,000; but before this loan could be made available, the promised time (July 1) for redemption had passed. The people seeing the paper currency still in circulation, with the prospect of more to follow, looking upon the promises made by the President as hollow, and made for the purpose to deceive them, began to murmur, and this disaffection began to spread. The President deemed it best to absent himself from the capital until the money should arrive. He had at the time a good excuse to do so, in stating the boundary question of the two Republics required his presence on the frontier. After this was settled, he had another to prolong his stay from the capital in a rumor of an anticipated uprising of certain of Mr. Jimenez's followers in the north, near Monte Christi. A portion of this money ($600,000) reached Santo Domingo City about the 5th of July. He distributed this sum among the merchants of Santo Domingo City and Macoris, where the greatest distress seemed to prevail; while this had a tendency to appease the people in and near those cities, it produced a contrary effect in the interior and the other parts of the Republic. They finally refused to receive the paper money, and would only exchange their products for gold. In and around Puerto Plata they would only receive it in exchange at the rate of 10 for 1, and in some cases 12 for 1. To repress this discontent, and to suppress these murmurs, several of the parties who had severely criticised the policy of the Government in issuing paper money were shot, as examples to others or like discontented spirits. While endeavoring to secure this temporary loan, he was endeavoring to consolidate all the debts of the country into one, pay the same off by securing a loan sufficiently large in the United States, giving to such a syndicate as guarantee the revenue of the country, and surrendering into their hands the whole fiscal policy of the Government to mold, retaining only the executive functions. As I have stated, the measures instituted by the President to relieve the people had an opposite effect in other sections of the Republic, |