and the patent; and the house of the first will become
once more the resort of "every one that is in distress, and every one
that is in debt, and every one that is discontented." Against such odds
it is my fear that Mataafa might contend in vain; it is beyond the bounds
of my imagination that Laupepa should contend at all. Foreign ships and
bayonets is the cure proposed in Mulinuu. And certainly, if people at
home desire that money should be thrown away and blood shed in Samoa, an
effect of a kind, and for the time, may be produced. Its nature and
prospective durability I will ask readers of this volume to forecast for
themselves. There is one way to peace and unity: that Laupepa and
Mataafa should be again conjoined on the best terms procurable. There
may be other ways, although I cannot see them; but not even malevolence,
not even stupidity, can deny that this is one. It seems, indeed, so
obvious, and sure, and easy, that men look about with amazement and
suspicion, seeking some hidden motive why it should not be adopted.

To Laupepa's opposition, as shown in the case of the Lauati scheme, no
dweller in Samoa will give weight, for they know him to be as putty in
the hands of his advisers. It may be right, it may be wrong, but we are
many of us driven to the conclusion that the stumbling-block is Fangalii,
and that the memorial of that affair shadows appropriately the house of a
king who reigns in right of it. If this be all, it should not trouble us
long. Germany has shown she can be generous; it now remains for her only
to forget a natural but certainly ill-grounded prejudice, and allow to
him, who was sole king before the plenipotentiaries assembled, and who
would be sole king to-morrow if the Berlin Act could be rescinded, a
fitting share of rule. The future of Samoa should lie thus in the hands
of a single man, on whom the eyes of Europe are already fixed. Great
concerns press on his attention; the Samoan group, in his view, is but as
a grain of dust; and the country where he reigns has bled on too many
august scenes of victory to remember for ever a blundering skirmish in
the plantation of Vailele. It is to him--to the sovereign of the wise
Stuebel and the loyal Brandeis,--that I make my appeal.

_May_ 25, 1892.

FOOTNOTES

{1} Brother and successor of Theodor.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY***

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