econd at least
natural. On the one part, they desired an efficient native
administration, to open up the country and punish crime; they wished, on
the other, to extend their own provinces and to curtail the dealings of
their rivals. In the first, they had the jealous and diffident sympathy
of all whites; in the second, they had all whites banded together
against them for their lives and livelihoods. It was thus a game of
_Beggar my Neighbour_ between a large merchant and some small ones. Had
it so remained, it would still have been a cut-throat quarrel. But when
the consulate appeared to be concerned, when the war-ships of the German
Empire were thought to fetch and carry for the firm, the rage of the
independent traders broke beyond restraint. And, largely from the
national touchiness and the intemperate speech of German clerks, this
scramble among dollar-hunters assumed the appearance of an inter-racial
war.

The firm, with the indomitable Weber at its head and the consulate at
its back--there has been the chief enemy at Samoa. No English reader can
fail to be reminded of John Company; and if the Germans appear to have
been not so successful, we can only wonder that our own blunders and
brutalities were less severely punished. Even on the field of Samoa,
though German faults and aggressions make up the burthen of my story,
they have been nowise alone. Three nations were engaged in this
infinitesimal affray, and not one appears with credit. They figure but
as the three ruffians of the elder playwrights. The United States have
the cleanest hands, and even theirs are not immaculate. It was an
ambiguous business when a private American adventurer was landed with
his pieces of artillery from an American war-ship, and became prime
minister to the king. It is true (even if he were ever really supported)
that he was soon dropped and had soon sold himself for money to the
German firm. I will leave it to the reader whether this trait dignifies
or not the wretched story. And the end of it spattered the credit alike
of England and the States, when this man (the premier of a friendly
sovereign) was kidnapped and deported, on the requisition of an American
consul, by the captain of an English war-ship. I shall have to tell, as
I proceed, of villages shelled on very trifling grounds by Germans; the
like has been done of late years, though in a better quarrel, by
ourselves of England. I shall have to tell how the Germans landed and