Page:Haiti- Her History and Her Detractors.djvu/258

 signed on the 28th of May, 1884, by Mr. Preston, Minister of Haiti, and Mr. Frelinghuysen, Secretary of State of the United States, Mr. William Strong, a late Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was appointed sole arbiter. The award rendered on the 13th of June, 1885, was of a most astounding nature. The Republic of Haiti was condemned to pay to A. H. Lazare $117,500 with interest at 6 per cent per annum from the 1st of November, 1875, and to the pirate Pelletier $57,200. On this occasion the Department of State gave manifest evidence of the sentiment of equity and justice which places the United States so high in the esteem of weaker nations. Haiti naturally complained of this extraordinary award and appealed to the Secretary of State, proving beyond doubt that Lazare had neither the money nor the credit wherewith to organize the bank. As to Pelletier, his crime was so evident that Mr. Seward, who was at that time Secretary of State, had refused most decidedly to act in his behalf; in his letter of November 30, 1863, to the United States Commissioner at Port-au-Prince, he thus expressed his opinion of the matter: "His (Pelletier's) conduct in Haiti and on its coast is conceived to have afforded the reasonable ground of suspicion against him on the part of the authorities of that Republic which led to his arrest, trial, and conviction in regular course of law, with which result it is not deemed expedient to interfere." And Mr. Gorham Eustis Hubbard, who was United States Commercial Agent at Cap-Haitien in 1861, had made the following declaration when he was summoned by the arbiter on the 22d of February, 1885: "It has always been my belief from that day to this that the Haitian Government ought to have executed the man as a pirate and confiscated his vessel and property beyond redemption."