him--salary, $4,000 a
year, vast consequence, and no perquisites.

Then we have his Excellency the Imperial Minister of Finance, who handles
a million dollars of public money a year, sends in his annual "budget"
with great ceremony, talks prodigiously of "finance," suggests imposing
schemes for paying off the "national debt" (of $150,000,) and does it all
for $4,000 a year and unimaginable glory.

Next we have his Excellency the Minister of War, who holds sway over the
royal armies--they consist of two hundred and thirty uniformed Kanakas,
mostly Brigadier Generals, and if the country ever gets into trouble with
a foreign power we shall probably hear from them. I knew an American
whose copper-plate visiting card bore this impressive legend:
"Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Infantry." To say that he was proud of
this distinction is stating it but tamely. The Minister of War has also
in his charge some venerable swivels on Punch-Bowl Hill wherewith royal
salutes are fired when foreign vessels of war enter the port.

Next comes his Excellency the Minister of the Navy--a nabob who rules the
"royal fleet," (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton schooner.)

And next comes his Grace the Lord Bishop of Honolulu, the chief dignitary
of the "Established Church"--for when the American Presbyterian
missionaries had completed the reduction of the nation to a compact
condition of Christianity, native royalty stepped in and erected the
grand dignity of an "Established (Episcopal) Church" over it, and
imported a cheap ready-made Bishop from England to take charge. The
chagrin of the missionaries has never been comprehensively expressed, to
this day, profanity not being admissible.

Next comes his Excellency the Minister of Public Instruction.

Next, their Excellencies the Governors of Oahu, Hawaii, etc., and after
them a string of High Sheriffs and other small fry too numerous for
computation.

Then there are their Excellencies the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the French; her
British Majesty's Minister; the Minister Resident, of the United States;
and some six or eight representatives of other foreign nations, all with
sounding titles, imposing dignity and prodigious but economical state.

Imagine all this grandeur in a play-house "kingdom" whose population
falls absolutely short of sixty thousand souls!

The people are so accustomed to nine-jointed titles and colossal magna