eneral
Act would succeed. After all, what was there to complain of? The Consuls
had shown themselves no slovens and no sentimentalists. They had shown
themselves not very particular, but in one sense very thorough.
Rebellion was to be put down swiftly and rigorously, if need were with
the hand of Cromwell; at least it was to be put down. And in these
unruly islands I was prepared almost to welcome the face of
Rhadamanthine severity.

And now it appears it was all a mistake. The government by the Berlin
General Act is no more than a mask, and a very expensive one, for
government by the Consular Triumvirate. Samoa pays (or tries to pay)
L2,200 a year to a couple of helpers; and they dare not call their souls
their own. They take their walks abroad with an anxious eye on the three
Consuls, like two well-behaved children with three nurses; and the
Consuls, smiling superior, allow them to amuse themselves with the
routine of business. But let trouble come, and the farce is suspended.
At the whistle of a squall these heaven-born mariners seize the tiller,
and the L2,200 amateurs are knocked sprawling on the bilge. At the first
beat of the drum, the treaty officials are sent below, gently
protesting, like a pair of old ladies, and behold! the indomitable
Consuls ready to clear the wreck and make the deadly cutlass shine. And
their method, studied under the light of a new example, wears another
air. They are not so Rhadamanthine as we thought. Something that we can
only call a dignified panic presides over their deliberations. They have
one idea to lighten the ship. "Overboard with the ballast, the
main-mast, and the chronometer!" is the cry. In the last war they got
rid (first) of the honour of their respective countries, and (second) of
all idea that Samoa was to be governed in a manner consistent with
civilisation, or Government troops punished for any conceivable
misconduct. In the present war they have sacrificed (first) the prestige
of the new Chief Justice, and (second) the very principle for which they
had contended so vigorously and so successfully in the war before--that
rebellion was a thing to be punished.

About the end of last year, that war, a war of the Tupuas under Tamasese
the younger, which was a necessary pendant to the crushing of Mataafa,
began to make itself heard of in obscure grumblings. It was but a timid
business. One half of the Tupua party, the whole province of Atua, never
joined the rebellion, b