Mr. Stevens to Mr. Gresham.
Honolulu, March 7, 1893.
Sir: By the American newspapers it appears, and I have the information from other sources, that a Mr. E. C. Macfarlane is in Washington, professing to be an ardent American, sometimes claiming to be an annexationist, but avows himself hostile to the Hawaiian Provisional Government and to the course of the Hawaiian commissioners:
It is proper for me to inform the Department of State that this man is one of the firm of George Macfarlane & Co., referred to by my predecessor here, Minister Merrill, in his dispatch 78, to Secretary Bayard, of September 2, 1886, page 558 of printed volume of diplomatic documents. Again, the minister refers to the same firm in his dispatch 138, of August 2, 1887, page 832, printed volume, by which it is seen that the firm was a party to defrauding the Hawaiian Government of more than $100,000 in negotiating a loan with a London house. For years this firm has been ultra English in its political affiliations and mercantile plans.
A few months since this E. C. Macfarlane, by intrigues and associations became one of the recent Queen’s ministers, minister of finance. So unsatisfactory was he to all the best members of the Legislature and to the business men of the Islands, that he remained in the ministry but a few days, being voted out by the Legislature though the English minister, openly and by personal effort, and his wife more conspicuously in the legislative hall, worked to retain him. After Macfarlane was voted out, the English minister used the former as a go-between to the Queen to get her to appoint another pro-English cabinet, but the effort failed. This E. C. Macfarlane is referred to in my 70 and 71. This is the man who sought to get access to President Cleveland, at Lakewood, according to the New York and Washington papers, and is now posing as an American and is said to be asking a [Page 415] hearing at Washington. He and his brother were born here of Scotch parentage, and E. C. lived several years in California. But American interests here have no more unrelenting foe than this liquor-importing house of G. W. Macfarlane & Co.
E. C. Macfarlane is a fitting confederate in Washington, as he has been in Honolulu, with Paul Neuman, the deposed Queen’s attorney, whose character is described in my dispatch 81 of January 26.
I am, sir, etc.,