ons of respect. Nanteitei, the weaker man, fell
more completely under the spell. Maka, a light-hearted, lovable, yet in
his own trade very rigorous man, gained and improved an influence on the
king which soon grew paramount. Nanteitei, with the royal house, was
publicly converted; and, with a severity which liberal missionaries
disavow, the harem was at once reduced. It was a compendious act. The
throne was thus impoverished, its influence shaken, the queen's
relatives mortified, and sixteen chief women (some of great possessions)
cast in a body on the market. I have been shipmates with a Hawaiian
sailor who was successively married to two of these _impromptu_ widows,
and successively divorced by both for misconduct. That two great and
rich ladies (for both of these were rich) should have married "a man
from another island" marks the dissolution of society. The laws besides
were wholly remodelled, not always for the better. I love Maka as a man;
as a legislator he has two defects: weak in the punishment of crime,
stern to repress innocent pleasures.

War and revolution are the common successors of reform; yet Nanteitei
died (of an overdose of chloroform), in quiet possession of the throne,
and it was in the reign of the third brother, Nabakatokia, a man brave
in body and feeble of character, that the storm burst. The rule of the
high chiefs and notables seems to have always underlain and perhaps
alternated with monarchy. The Old Men (as they were called) have a right
to sit with the king in the Speak House and debate: and the king's chief
superiority is a form of closure--"The Speaking is over." After the
long monocracy of Nakaeia and the changes of Nanteitei, the Old Men
were doubtless grown impatient of obscurity, and they were beyond
question jealous of the influence of Maka. Calumny, or rather
caricature, was called in use; a spoken cartoon ran round society; Maka
was reported to have said in church that the king was the first man in
the island and himself the second; and, stung by the supposed affront,
the chiefs broke into rebellion and armed gatherings. In the space of
one forenoon the throne of Nakaeia was humbled in the dust. The king sat
in the maniap' before the palace gate expecting his recruits; Maka by
his side, both anxious men; and meanwhile, in the door of a house at the
north entry of the town, a chief had taken post and diverted the
succours as they came. They came singly or in groups, each with his gu