e kingly power began to weaken
from that day. Forty-seven years later, when I was in the islands,
Kamehameha V. was trying to repair Liholiho's blunder, and not
succeeding. He had set up an Established Church and made himself the
head of it. But it was only a pinchbeck thing, an imitation, a bauble,
an empty show. It had no power, no value for a king. It could not harry
or burn or slay, it in no way resembled the admirable machine which
Liholiho destroyed. It was an Established Church without an
Establishment; all the people were Dissenters.

Long before that, the kingship had itself become but a name, a show. At
an early day the missionaries had turned it into something very much like
a republic; and here lately the business whites have turned it into
something exactly like it.

In Captain Cook's time (1778), the native population of the islands was
estimated at 400,000; in 1836 at something short of 200,000, in 1866 at
50,000; it is to-day, per census, 25,000. All intelligent people praise
Kamehameha I. and Liholiho for conferring upon their people the great
boon of civilization. I would do it myself, but my intelligence is out
of repair, now, from over-work.

When I was in the islands nearly a generation ago, I was acquainted with
a young American couple who had among their belongings an attractive
little son of the age of seven--attractive but not practicably
companionable with me, because he knew no English. He had played from
his birth with the little Kanakas on his father's plantation, and had
preferred their language and would learn no other. The family removed to
America a month after I arrived in the islands, and straightway the boy
began to lose his Kanaka and pick up English. By the time he was twelve
he hadn't a word of Kanaka left; the language had wholly departed from
his tongue and from his comprehension. Nine years later, when he was
twenty-one, I came upon the family in one of the lake towns of New York,
and the mother told me about an adventure which her son had been having.
By trade he was now a professional diver. A passenger boat had been
caught in a storm on the lake, and had gone down, carrying her people
with her. A few days later the young diver descended, with his armor on,
and entered the berth-saloon of the boat, and stood at the foot of the
companionway, with his hand on the rail, peering through the dim water.
Presently something touched him on the shoulder, and he turned