was a private corporation
engaged in making money; to it was delegated, upon a question of profit
and loss, one of the functions of the Samoan crown; and those who make
anomalies must look for comments. Public feeling ran unanimous and high.
Prisoners who escaped from the private gaol were not recaptured or not
returned, and Malietoa hastened to build a new prison of his own,
whither he conveyed, or pretended to convey, the fugitives. In October
1885 a trenchant state paper issued from the German consulate. Twenty
prisoners, the consul wrote, had now been at large for eight months from
Weber's prison. It was pretended they had since then completed their
term of punishment elsewhere. Dr. Stuebel did not seek to conceal his
incredulity; but he took ground beyond; he declared the point
irrelevant. The law was to be enforced. The men were condemned to a
certain period in Weber's prison; they had run away; they must now be
brought back and (whatever had become of them in the interval) work out
the sentence. Doubtless Dr. Stuebel's demands were substantially just;
but doubtless also they bore from the outside a great appearance of
harshness; and when the king submitted, the murmurs of the people
increased.

But Weber was not yet content. The law had to be enforced; property, or
at least the property of the firm, must be respected. And during an
absence of the consul's, he seems to have drawn up with his own hand,
and certainly first showed to the king, in his own house, a new
convention. Weber here and Weber there. As an able man, he was perhaps
in the right to prepare and propose conventions. As the head of a
trading company, he seems far out of his part to be communicating state
papers to a sovereign. The administration of justice was the colour, and
I am willing to believe the purpose, of the new paper; but its effect
was to depose the existing government. A council of two Germans and two
Samoans were to be invested with the right to make laws and impose taxes
as might be "desirable for the common interest of the Samoan government
and the German residents." The provisions of this council the king and
vice-king were to sign blindfold. And by a last hardship, the Germans,
who received all the benefit, reserved a right to recede from the
agreement on six months' notice; the Samoans, who suffered all the loss,
were bound by it in perpetuity. I can never believe that my friend Dr.
Stuebel had a hand in drafting these proposals