; I am only surprised he
should have been a party to enforcing them, perhaps the chief error in
these islands of a man who has made few. And they were enforced with a
rigour that seems injudicious. The Samoans (according to their own
account) were denied a copy of the document; they were certainly rated
and threatened; their deliberation was treated as contumacy; two German
war-ships lay in port, and it was hinted that these would shortly
intervene.

Succeed in frightening a child, and he takes refuge in duplicity.
"Malietoa," one of the chiefs had written, "we know well we are in
bondage to the great governments." It was now thought one tyrant might
be better than three, and any one preferable to Germany. On the 5th
November 1885, accordingly, Laupepa, Tamasese, and forty-eight high
chiefs met in secret, and the supremacy of Samoa was secretly offered to
Great Britain for the second time in history. Laupepa and Tamasese still
figured as king and vice-king in the eyes of Dr. Stuebel; in their own,
they had secretly abdicated, were become private persons, and might do
what they pleased without binding or dishonouring their country. On the
morrow, accordingly, they did public humiliation in the dust before the
consulate, and five days later signed the convention. The last was done,
it is claimed, upon an impulse. The humiliation, which it appeared to
the Samoans so great a thing to offer, to the practical mind of Dr.
Stuebel seemed a trifle to receive; and the pressure was continued and
increased. Laupepa and Tamasese were both heavy, well-meaning,
inconclusive men. Laupepa, educated for the ministry, still bears some
marks of it in character and appearance; Tamasese was in private of an
amorous and sentimental turn, but no one would have guessed it from his
solemn and dull countenance. Impossible to conceive two less dashing
champions for a threatened race; and there is no doubt they were reduced
to the extremity of muddlement and childish fear. It was drawing towards
night on the 10th, when this luckless pair and a chief of the name of
Tuiatafu, set out for the German consulate, still minded to temporise.
As they went, they discussed their case with agitation. They could see
the lights of the German war-ships as they walked--an eloquent reminder.
And it was then that Tamasese proposed to sign the convention. "It will
give us peace for the day," said Laupepa, "and afterwards Great Britain
must decide."--"Better fight Ger