he had said; and, on the same question
arising in another province, decide it perhaps otherwise. I gather, on
the whole, our artillery captain was not great in law. Two articles
refer to a matter I must deal with more at length, and rather from the
point of view of the white residents.

The common charge against Brandeis was that of favouring the German firm.
Coming as he did, this was inevitable. Weber had bought Steinberger with
hard cash; that was matter of history. The present government he did not
even require to buy, having founded it by his intrigues, and introduced
the premier to Samoa through the doors of his own office. And the effect
of the initial blunder was kept alive by the chatter of the clerks in bar-
rooms, boasting themselves of the new government and prophesying
annihilation to all rivals. The time of raising a tax is the harvest of
the merchants; it is the time when copra will be made, and must be sold;
and the intention of the German firm, first in the time of Steinberger,
and again in April and May, 1888, with Brandeis, was to seize and handle
the whole operation. Their chief rivals were the Messrs. MacArthur; and
it seems beyond question that provincial governors more than once issued
orders forbidding Samoans to take money from "the New Zealand firm."
These, when they were brought to his notice, Brandeis disowned, and he is
entitled to be heard. No man can live long in Samoa and not have his
honesty impugned. But the accusations against Brandeis's veracity are
both few and obscure. I believe he was as straight as his sword. The
governors doubtless issued these orders, but there were plenty besides
Brandeis to suggest them. Every wandering clerk from the firm's office,
every plantation manager, would be dinning the same story in the native
ear. And here again the initial blunder hung about the neck of Brandeis,
a ton's weight. The natives, as well as the whites, had seen their
premier masquerading on a stool in the office; in the eyes of the
natives, as well as in those of the whites, he must always have retained
the mark of servitude from that ill-judged passage; and they would be
inclined to look behind and above him, to the great house of _Misi Ueba_.
The government was like a vista of puppets. People did not trouble with
Tamasese, if they got speech with Brandeis; in the same way, they might
not always trouble to ask Brandeis, if they had a hint direct from _Misi
Ueba_. In onl