No. 176.
Mr. Bassett to Mr. Fish.

No. 464.]

Sir: Referring to that part of my No. 454, of May 31, 1876, which noted the facts that elections for members of the Chamber of Deputies were then in progress, and that that body would, when organized, proceed first to the election of senators, and then, in connection with the senate, to the choice of a person to be President of Hayti, I have the honor to state that the Chamber of Deputies having organized on the 20th ultimo, and having terminated its election of senators on the 5th instant, the two houses met in national assembly on the 17th instant and proceeded to the election of a chief of state. On the first ballot there were 96 votes cast, of which General Boisrond Canal received 62, Mr. Boyer Bazelais 31, and there were 3 scattering votes. But as the law requires that a candidate must receive an absolute majority of two-thirds of all the votes cast in order to be elected, the assembly proceeded to the second ballot, which resulted in 68 votes for General Canal, and 28 for Mr. Bazelais. General Boisrond Canal was thereupon declared duly elected President of Hayti. The term of presidential office here is, as with us, four years. But the date fixed for its commencement by the constitution of 1867 is the 15th of May. Therefore the constitutional end of President Canal’s term of office is fixed for the 15th of May, 1880.

President Canal took the oath of office on the 19th instant and entered at once upon the discharge of its duties.

My colleagues and myself were invited to attend both the election and the inauguration of the President. They were all present, but I was sick in bed on those and several subsequent days.

There are some facts prominently connected with President Canal’s elevation to office which seem to merit an observation or two. And first, I may say that in no previous election of any character in Hayti had there ever been any approach to the freedom of expression and choice allowed to the electors in this canvass. No one of them was, as far as I know or believe, in any way intimidated or driven or unduly influenced to vote or act against his own simple free will in the matter. This had never before been the case in Hayti.

[Page 334]

The partisans of Mr. Bazelais worked openly and above board for their candidate up to the very moment of taking the second and final vote in the National Assembly on the 17th instant.

Another fact worthy of remark, because it is also new to this country, is that General Canal strenuously refused to make the least effort for his election, and on all occasions appeared simply as a citizen without rank or military title.

I can hardly resist the temptation to point to General Canal’s elevation to the chief magistracy of his country by the free choice of his fellow-citizens as a confirmation of the views constantly expressed of him in my dispatches to you last year, when he was a refugee under our flag here, and as another illustration of the great truth that all men, especially those clothed with position and power as Domingue and Rameau were a year ago, must be not only just, but also generous, in their dealings with and tender in their judgments of their fellow-men. If Domingue and Rameau had been observant of this great principle, General Canal would probably never have allowed himself to be even a candidate for the presidency of Hayti. But what a lesson! Boisrond Canal, President of Hayti, and probably the most popular citizen in his country, while the very Domingue and Rameau, who clamored most wrongfully and shamefully for his life through five long months in 1875, setting at defiance all fairness and justice, are driven from power in disgrace by the very violence to which they appealed—the one sleeping in a dishonored grave, and the other in his old age eating his bread in the same exile to which he in the day of his power so mercilessly consigned others.

President Canal, the grandson of Boisrond Tonnerre, who was the author of the declaration of Haytian independence, is a mulatto about forty-four years of age, in the full vigor of perfect health, of handsome face, erect carriage, and manly form. It is almost impossible to look into his handsome manly face without seeing there the index of an honest heart, a brave and generous character. A slight but constantly recurring impediment in his speech mars, but does not cover from view, his correct knowledge of his own language. He has a limited knowlege of English, to which, however, he only resorts in case of necessity. Of a genial, happy temperament, in his manners modest, without affectation or forwardness, honest and frank in all his intercourse with his fellow-men, he is personally very popular with all classes here, beloved alike by the blacks, the whites, and that ambitious passionate class the aristocratic mulattoes. He has never been an aspirant for any public office or command whatever, and I do not think he has ever knowingly wronged a single human being or has a single personal enemy. Except when in the active military service of his country or acting as senator under the Saget administration, he has been a quiet planter, working with his own hands among his hundreds of employés, for whose religious and secular education he established a chapel and a school on his large plantation in the commune of La Coupe. In character he is the complete opposite of Rameau. He has hardly a trace of avariciousness or vindictiveness or cruelty or low cunning or illiberality toward foreigners or prejudice against any class of persons in his nature.

Whether he will be able to retrieve his country from the truly deplorable situation into which Rameau’s rule plunged it, or whether in the midst of the difficulties, vexations, and temptations with which his new position will surround him, he will succeed in maintaining and infusing into his administration his own manly character, it is perhaps altogether too early yet to determine. It is certain, however, that neither he nor any other man can in the short space of four years materially [Page 335] change the fixed habits of this people or create this country into a paradise. He, like others, may find that circumstances will control him in spite of himself more than he can control them; for it is a fact that a man is worked on by what he himself works on. The address to the people and the army of Hayti, which he delivered in terse and elegant French on the occasion of his inauguration and which I send herewith inclosed, intelligently sets forth his good purposes, and is, I think, a truthful representation of his patriotic inspirations.

In further proof of his disinterested patriotism it should be stated that, immediately after his election, he sent for the chief of the party opposed to his election, Mr. Boyer Bazelais, and offered him the portfolio of finance, commerce, and foreign affairs, the highest appointment within the executive control. Mr. Bazelais declined the proffered influential appointment. But this step is remarkable as the only one of the kind that has ever been taken by a President of Hayti. The rule of former Presidents has always been rather to belittle, disgrace, or even to persecute political opponents. President Canal has also called around him a ministry whose members are known for their personal honor and integrity. His disposition toward foreigners will undoubtedly prove to be of the most friendly character.

But he has at best a severer task upon him than any of his predecessors have ever had. Indeed, how, in view of the real habits of this people, he can find the means to face the engagements or meet the actual necessities of his country, so as to satisfy all at home and abroad who have legitimate interests in Hayti, I confess myself unable just now to foresee.

I am, &c.,

EBENEZER D. BASSETT.
[Inclosure in No. 464.—Translation.]

Republic of Hayti.

Liberty—Equality—Fraternity.

address to the people and the army.

Boisrond Canal, President of Hayti.

Fellow-Citizens: Engrave upon your memory the unfortunate date of the 20th of May, 1874; what happened on that day of sorrow will serve as a lesson for the future!

The infamous coup d’état, long premeditated by persons struck with universal reprobation, received its consummation, and as the fatal result, a man whose dire celebrity was not unknown to any, ascended the presidential seat on the 11th of Jane.

This man’s twenty-two months’ administration, twenty-two months of a burdensome oppression stained at nearly each step with filthiness and blood, have removed from us all the liberties which we had conquered during thirty years of trials and struggles. They have exhausted the most vital forces of the nation and plunged our miserable country iu such a deplorable situation that superhuman efforts only can save it.

The suspension of the laws, the dissolution of the legislative body, our constitution torn in fragments and cast to the wind, accusations in horror, dread imposed on all by shootings and proscriptions unparalleled in our history, unjust duties suppressing production, illegal additional taxes bearing with all their weight on the laboring classes, all the public services suffering, immoral loans negotiated on all sides, our agriculture, our commerce panting, threatened by imminent ruin; such is the doleful and, in the mean while, the incomplete history of these last two years.

A revolution only could cast off the danger and close the pit opened beneath our feet.

These appeals to arms, too often reiterated among us, become periodical, as it can be [Page 336] said, are fatal and even mortal for the young nations; but do they not become a necessity when all the principles of public order are forgotten, all liberties suppressed, all laws violated, when the reign of good pleasure is made to take the place of lawful rule, and when the press and the tribune, those mighty organs of the people, dare not be heard in vindication of the most solemn rights?

Forty days were sufficient to sweep from the country’s soil this pretended colossus and the multitude of persons in his service and pay.

The provisional government that sprang up from this revolution has ended its glorious mandate, and the National Assembly, freely chosen by the people, has just called me to direct for four years the destinies of the country.

Haytians, all my brethren and friends: I am proud of the suffrages of that grand assembly, proud of the work of reparation which is intrusted to me, without dissimulating the difficulties of the task which it imposes upon me.

To substitute the rule of laws for that of arbitrary will; to place again upon its pedestal the constitution of 1867; to re-organize, within the limits of our needs and our financial resources, our army and our navy; to make our agriculture and commerce to flourish; to modify our custom-house duties; to revive the sources of public fortune; to create new ones; to introduce order, honesty, and a strict economy in the management of our affairs; to lift up our credit and prestige abroad; to put upon an honorable and satisfactory basis our relations with the different civilized powers of the globe; to spread education among the people; to moralize the masses; to repair, in line, the two years’ ruins of the fallen government: these are the things that the National Assembly demands me to undertake in conferring upon me the office of President of the republic. What an immense task; but also what glory attached to the fulfillment even of a part of this gigantic enterprise. The intelligence, activity, and perseverance of a single person are not sufficient in this supreme moment; I would infallibly fail if I were not powerfully seconded and sustained. Hence I make appeal to all for their aid. I call to my support all the intelligence, all the capacity, all the light, all the men of feeling and heart, and showing the naked wounds of the country, struggling in the convulsions of death, I say to them, let us unite and save our common mother.

Haytians, my brethren and friends, you will not be deaf to my voice.

In the fulfillment of my task, I cannot fail to count, in a particular manner, upon the mighty and efficacious assistance of the great bodies of state. They will aid me by their counsel, by their experience; and from the similarity of our views, of our ideas and sentiments, will come forth the welfare of our most unfortunate country.

According to the terms of the constitution and of the decree of the national assembly, I will descend from the presidential seat on the 15th of May, 1880.

In transmitting the authority to him who shall be freely chosen without suggestion by the legislative body, I will feel even happy if order and public peace shall have been definitely acclimated in our country, too often disturbed by internal dissensions. I will feel very proud if a race of men, of which the political aptitudes are contested, presents to the whole world the spectacle of a free people understanding its rights and duties, loving and honoring labor, and directing all its aspiration toward progress. I will think myself to have merited the national acknowledgment, if, instead of the paralyzed body that is remitted to me, I hand it over a nation with all the elements of a strong vitality.

Fellow-citizens, such is the object to which I aspire and toward which all my efforts shall tend.

Permit me to flatter myself that they will be crowned with success, and that the day when I shall become one of the humble citizens of Hayti, your loyal representatives, among whom the noblest sentiments of justice and impartiality always shine forth, will openly declare in your name that, during the exercise of ray mandate, I fulfilled and executed in the measure of possibility the vast programme of ameliorations demanded by the country. The highest degree of satisfaction which a public servant can aim at in his ambition, is that of conquering the approbation of his constituents.

I earnestly desire this glorious title.

Long live the republic; long live the constitution; long live the union of the Haytian family.


BOISROND CANAL.