81

LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 455

agent, to my injury, both at the State Department and with Mr. Clyde's firm.
I was reported at Washington and to various persons in high places as
unfriendly to this concession.

"When at last it appeared to the agent that the Government of Haïti was,
as he thought, stubbornly blind to its own interests, and that it would not
grant the contract in question, he called at the United States Legation and
expressed to me his disappointment and disgust at the delay of Haïti in
accepting his scheme. He said he did not believe that the Government really
intended to do anything for his firm; that he himself had spent much time and
money in promoting the concession; and as he did not think that Mr. Clyde
ought to be made to pay for the time thus lost and the expense incurred by
the delay and dallying of the Haïtien Government, he should therefore
demand his pay of Haïti. This determination struck me as very odd, and I
jocosely replied:

"'Then, sir, as they will not allow you to put a hot poker down their
backs, you mean to make them pay for heating it!'

"This rejoinder was my final destruction in the esteem of this zealous
adrncate. He saw at once that he could not count upon my assistance in mak-
ing this new demand. I was both surprised at his proposal and amused by it,
and wondered that he could think it possible that he could get this pay. It
seemed to me that Haïti would scout the idea at once. She had not sent for
him. She had not asked him to stay. He was there for purposes of his own
and not for any purpose of hers. I could not see why Haïti should pay him
for coming, going, or staying. But this gentleman knew better than I the
generous character of the people with whom he had to deal, and he followed
them up till they actually paid him $5,000 in gold.

"But compliance with his demand proved a woeful mistake on the part of
Haïti, and, in fact, nonsense. This man, after getting his money, went away,
but he did not stay away. He was soon back again to press his scheme with
renewed vigor. His demands were now to be complied with or he would
make, not Rome, but Haïti, howl. To him it was nothing that Haïti was
already wasted by repeated revolutions; nothing that she was already stag-
gering under the weight of a heavy national debt; nothing that she herself
ought to be the best judge of her ability to pour out a half-million of dollars
in this new and, to her, doubtful enterprise; nothing that she had heard his
arguments in its favor a hundred times over; nothing that in her judgment,
she had far more pressing needs for her money than the proposed investment
in this steamship subsidy, as recommended by him; nothing that she had told
him plainly that she was afraid to add to her pecuniary burdens this new and