lf. The people, as I had been told, did not think the
orator honest; some judge, on a particular occasion, had inclined to the
same view, and the man of talent was disbarred. By a clause in a
statute, a layman or a disbarred lawyer might conduct a case for himself
or for one of "his own family." Is a father-in-law one of a man's own
family? "Yes," argued the orator: "No," with less grace and perspicuity,
Nahinu, retained by the Portuguese. The laws of the tight little kingdom
are conceived in duplicate for the Hawaiian hare and his many white
friends. The native text appearing inconclusive, an appeal was made to
the English, and I (as _amicus curiae_) was led out, installed upon the
court-house steps, and painfully examined as to its precise
significance. The judge heard the orator; he heard Nahinu; he received
by the mouth of the schoolmaster my report, for which he thanked me with
a bow; and ruled the claimant out. This skirmish decided the fate of the
engagement; fortune was faithful to the Portuguese; and late in the
afternoon, the capable judge rode off homeward with his portfolio under
his arm. No court could have been more equally and decently conducted;
judge, parties, lawyers, and police were all decorous and competent; and
but for the plaintiff, the business was entirely native.

The Portuguese had come seven miles to Hookena, sure of substantial
justice, and he left his store open, fearless of being robbed. Another
white man, of strong sense and much frugality and choler, thus reckoned
up what he had lost by theft in thirty-nine years among the different
islands of Hawaii: a pair of shoes, an umbrella, some feet of hose-pipe,
and one batch of chickens. It is his continual practice to send
Hawaiians by a perilous, solitary path with sums in specie; at any
moment the messenger might slip, the money-bag roll down a thousand feet
of precipice, and lodge in fissures inaccessible to man: and consider
how easy it were to invent such misadventures!--"I should have to know a
white man well before I trusted him," he said; "I trust Hawaiians
without fear. It would be villainous of me to say less." It should be
remembered the Hawaiians of yore were not particular; they were eager to
steal from Cook, whom they believed to be a god, and it was a theft that
led to the tragedy at Kealakekua Bay; and it must not be forgotten that
the Hawaiians of to-day are many of them poor. One residual trait of
savage incompetence I have al