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be passed down to their children’s children. After the truth was made public they became ashamed to hear themselves called “P. G.’s,” and, repudiating the name, called themselves instead “Annexationists.”
The so-called Provisional Government began in the spring of 1894 to consider again a change of name. So they allowed a few of their chosen tools to vote for what was called a constitutional convention, of which the original conspirators, to the number of nineteen, who had no warrant for their position save their own self-given nominations, and eighteen others in sympathy with them, enacted what they called a constitution; and in order to have some guns fired at its adoption, and to curry favor with the United States, they announced the so-called Republic on the fourth day of July, 1894, and it was declared from the steps of Iolani Palace, while the vessels of war in the harbor were saluting for a totally different occasion.
During that same month Mr. Samuel Parker had mentioned to me the necessity, in his opinion, of sending a Hawaiian commissioner to the United States to see what could be done for our people. Mr. Cornwell also consulted me upon the same matter. By conference with these gentlemen, it was decided that, instead of sending five commissioners, as we had at first designed to do, that Hon. Samuel Parker, Mr. John A. Cummins, Judge H. A. Widemann, with Major W. T. Seaward as secretary, should visit the capital of the United States, and represent those in Hawaii, whether native or foreign, opposed to the missionary party, that so the government of the majority might get a hearing