the greatest; that they have been here for upwards of
six months, and government under the Berlin Treaty is still
overridden--and I may say overlaid--by the government of the Consular
triumvirate.

This is the main fountain of our present discontents. This it is that we
pray to be relieved from. Out of six Sovereigns, exercising incongruous
rights or usurpations on this unhappy island, we pray to be relieved of
three. The Berlin Treaty was not our choice; but if we are to have it at
all, let us have it plain. Let us have the text, and nothing but the
text. Let the three Consuls who have no position under the treaty cease
from troubling, cease from raising war and making peace, from passing
illegal regulations in the face of day, and from secretly blackmailing
the Samoan Government into renunciations of its independence.
Afterwards, when we have once seen it in operation, we shall be able to
judge whether government under the Berlin Treaty suits or does not suit
our case.--I am, Sir, etc.,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

X

FROM THE "DAILY CHRONICLE," _March_ 18, 1895.

[Subjoined is the full text of the late Robert Louis Stevenson's last
letter to Mr. J. F. Hogan, M.P. Apart from its pathetic interest as
one of the final compositions of the distinguished novelist, its
eloquent terms of pleading for his exiled friend Mataafa, and the
light it sheds on Samoan affairs, make it a very noteworthy and
instructive document.--ED. _D.C._]

_Vailima, Oct._ 7, 1894.

J. F. HOGAN, ESQ., M.P.

Dear Sir,--My attention was attracted the other day by the thoroughly
pertinent questions which you put in the House of Commons, and which the
Government failed to answer. It put an idea in my head that you were
perhaps the man who might take up a task which I am almost ready to give
up. Mataafa is now known to be my hobby. People laugh when they see any
mention of his name over my signature, and the _Times_, while it still
grants me hospitality, begins to lead the chorus. I know that nothing
can be more fatal to Mataafa's cause than that he should be made
ridiculous, and I cannot help feeling that a man who makes his bread by
writing fiction labours under the disadvantage of suspicion when he
touches on matters of fact. If I were even backed up before the world by
one other voice, people might continue to listen, and in the end
something might be done. But so long as I stand quite alone, telling the
same s