sent
government he did not even require to buy, having founded it by his
intrigues, and introduced the premier to Samoa through the doors of his
own office. And the effect of the initial blunder was kept alive by the
chatter of the clerks in bar-rooms, boasting themselves of the new
government and prophesying annihilation to all rivals. The time of
raising a tax is the harvest of the merchants; it is the time when copra
will be made, and must be sold; and the intention of the German firm,
first in the time of Steinberger, and again in April and May, 1888, with
Brandeis, was to seize and handle the whole operation. Their chief
rivals were the Messrs. MacArthur; and it seems beyond question that
provincial governors more than once issued orders forbidding Samoans to
take money from "the New Zealand firm." These, when they were brought to
his notice, Brandeis disowned, and he is entitled to be heard. No man
can live long in Samoa and not have his honesty impugned. But the
accusations against Brandeis's veracity are both few and obscure. I
believe he was as straight as his sword. The governors doubtless issued
these orders, but there were plenty besides Brandeis to suggest them.
Every wandering clerk from the firm's office, every plantation manager,
would be dinning the same story in the native ear. And here again the
initial blunder hung about the neck of Brandeis, a ton's weight. The
natives, as well as the whites, had seen their premier masquerading on a
stool in the office; in the eyes of the natives, as well as in those of
the whites, he must always have retained the mark of servitude from that
ill-judged passage; and they would be inclined to look behind and above
him, to the great house of _Misi Ueba_. The government was like a vista
of puppets. People did not trouble with Tamasese, if they got speech
with Brandeis; in the same way, they might not always trouble to ask
Brandeis, if they had a hint direct from _Misi Ueba_. In only one case,
though it seems to have had many developments, do I find the premier
personally committed. The MacArthurs claimed the copra of Fasitotai on a
district mortgage of three hundred dollars. The German firm accepted a
mortgage of the whole province of Aana, claimed the copra of Fasitotai
as that of a part of Aana, and were supported by the government. Here
Brandeis was false to his own principle, that personal and village debts
should come before provincial. But the case occurred before t