Chapter VII.

FOREIGN RELATIONS.

President Hyppolite opens his annual message to the Corps Législatif in 1891 with this passage:

If there is one sentiment which is more and more emphasized among modern nations, it is that of their community of interests. It is this that renders them constantly more and more attentive to investigate and know one another better and to strengthen the cords that bind them together. It seems, in fact, that, though a state be crowned with every material prosperity and be in possession of the most powerful of equipments, it can not feel itself prosperous or happy if it be isolated in its grandeur, if other nations do not unite to surround it, if not with their sympathy, at least with their esteem and their consideration. Therefore, it is an imperious necessity for every state to preoccupy itself most especially with its foreign relations.

However trite these views may seem, they nevertheless serve to show the importance and the necessity which Haiti attaches to the onward march of the nations as well as their steady trend toward a fuller recognition of independence.

In a preceding chapter, mention has been made of the hesitancy and tardiness with which the great powers admitted Haiti into the family of States, but the progress of events and the spirit of the time long since did away with all that, and to-day, almost all those powers, except Russia, are represented at the Haitian capital by either a diplomatic or consular officer.

France maintains there a minister plenipotentiary, the United States, Germany, Great Britain,* and Liberia each a minister resi

Great Britain has lately maintained only a consular officer in Port au Prince. For years, she had a chargé d'affaires. In 1874, the rank was raised to that of minister resident.

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dent; Santo Domingo a chargé d'affaires, and Spain a consul who has a quasi-diplomatic character, while Portugal, Belgium, Holland, Norway and Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Gautemala, Honduras, Venezuela, the United States of Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentine, and Uruguay are each represented by a consul, and a majority of all these powers have also vice-consuls or consuls at the other

the Republic.

open ports of Haiti is in treaty relations with several of these States, especially with all the great powers, and she maintains six legations abroad: Ministers plenipotentiary at Paris, Washington, Berlin, London, Madrid, and Santo Domingo, at an aggregate ordinary cost of $81,000 per annum. Each Haitian minister abroad receives a salary of $10,000 and $1,500 for incidental expenses per annum, and is in addition to that, allowed a secretary of legation whose compensation is $3,000 per annum, except that the salary of the minister at Santo Domingo is $7,000 a year, and with it, goes in addition an appropriation of $900 for a secretary and $600 for office rent.

Haiti has also in its service more than fifty consuls-general, consuls, and vice-consuls, who are stationed at so many different ports in the United States, on the Isthmus, in the Antilles, in Europe, and elsewhere. Appropriations are made every year so that each one of these officers receives compensation, the average ordinary pay for each being about $500. The highest annual salaries on this list are paid to the consuls at Colon, Barbados, and Martinique, each being $1,800. The presumption is that the functions of these three last named officers are quasi political in character.

It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that Haiti is considered to have always shown good judgment in the selection of her diplomatic agents. They have all acquitted themselves creditably, and each one of them speaks the language of the country to which

he is accredited. Mr. Stephen Preston was the Haitian Minister at Washington continuously for nearly twenty years, and during a third of that time, he was the dean of the diplomatic corps there. His immediate predecessor, the late Gen. Alexander Tate, and his wife are still favorably remembered by the older officials in the American capital. Mr. Hannibal Price, the recent minister, maintained the good impression left by his predecessors. The minister at Berlin, M. Delorme, has already won fame as a littérateur at Paris, and it is an acknowledged fact that all those whom Haiti has chosen for her diplomatic service have proved themselves to be men of character.

As far as the general public knows, there are pending between foreign governments and Haiti no questions of sufficient importance to affect her dignity, menace her autonomy, or interfere with the free working of the ordinary machinery for administering her internal affairs.

It may be stated that, in the long run and in her own way, Haiti always meets every financial obligation, and it is confessedly a fact that she has sometimes consented to pay and has paid claims which no great powers like France or Great Britain would have been expected to recognize. It is believed that she has taken this course in order to avoid what seemed at the moment like possible complications with foreign powers which, at times, as she has thought, have appeared to be only too ready to take advantage of her comparative isolation and weakness. In these instances, she has apparently feared some ulterior designs on the part of the interfering great power. For example, during the last years of Gen. Salomon's administration, Great Britain sent a commissioner (Mr. Hill) backed up by a display of force to demand at prompt settlement of the claims of British subjects. Haiti became so convinced that the ulterior object of that demand was to secure a footing on some remote part of her territory (L'Ile de la Tortue) that she invoked the friendly offices of the United States in her behalf.

Aside from these claims for pecuniary indemnity, Haiti has seldom on her hands important international questions, though to her, as to other independent states, these questions do sometimes

come.

Great stress was laid on the recent negotiations for the cession or lease to the United States of the Môle St. Nicholas for a naval station. The importance which Haiti attached to these negotiations, all friendly as they were on the part of the United States, grew partly out of the unmistakable national sensitiveness which permeates all classes there about the most jealous conservation of her autonomy.

"I know very well," recently said the President of Santo Domingo, "that what the great powers think they need, they must sooner or later have. But if they take time to decide about making the initial request, they must give us time to decide whether we can grant it. It will be found that in reference to all matters of international moment, the people of Haiti are not altogether insensible to or incognizant of the tendency of things, the march of events, the spirit of the times."

For years, there have been pending between the two Republics of the island questions the settlement of which they have repeatedly declared to be "absolutely necessary to the pacific development, the progress, and prosperity of the two peoples," and in 1874, there was negotiated and concluded between the two powers a treaty which has some features of reciprocity. According to this treaty, certain special neighborly relations were to be established, and most particularly, there was to be a free exchange of products between them over the frontier and otherwise, and as the balance of that traffic. was presumed to be in favor of Haiti, she agreed to pay to her neighbor a certain stipulated sum for eight years from that date as a compensation for the probable losses which would come to the revenues of Santo Domingo in consequence of the free exchange of products provided for in the treaty.

The latter power claims that this indemnity, now running up to nearly $1,000,000, has never been fully paid, and claims also that the old "treaty of the boundaries" of 1776 needs a readjustment. Several attempts have been made to come to an understanding over these matters. In February, 1890, the Presidents of the two Republics had a formal meeting on the outskirts of the commune of Port au Prince to discuss amicably the existing disagreement. Later on, in the same year, the Dominican President, with manifest impatience at delay, convoked the Cuerpo Legislativo (Congress) in special session over the matter. Finally, Haiti, in December, 1890, sent an imposing commission of plenipotentiaries, all able and experienced men, to the Dominican capital, there to come to a friendly settlement of the long-standing difficulties. The effort, as had all previous ones, failed, and the questions between the two Republics are still pending. The facts are that, by a sort of long-continued tacit consent or acquiescence, the boundaries are taken to be where the two languages begin to commingle, and that no power short of a strong standing force is likely to hold in check effectually the traffic over the frontiers, all the people living there being deeply interested in it. Still it is not thought that the relations of friendship and good neighborhood will be seriously affected by a continuance of the status quo, however much it may appear, from time to time, to be a source of irritation.

The German element in Haiti is important, not so much on account of its numbers as of its orderly intelligence and energy, which have created important German interests there, and the German Emperor has, within the past year, promoted his representative to the grade of minister resident. Through him, His Majesty has proposed a treaty of peace, friendship, navigation, and commerce, having for its principal basis "the most-favored nation" clause.

The diplomatic and consular officers of every grade in Haiti