rry of events. Our two white officers have
accordingly been no more perspicacious than was to be looked for, and I
think they have sometimes been less wise. It was not wise in the
president to proclaim Mataafa and his followers rebels and their estates
confiscated. Such words are not respectable till they repose on force;
on the lips of an angry white man, standing alone on a small promontory,
they were both dangerous and absurd; they might have provoked ruin;
thanks to the character of Mataafa, they only raised a smile and damaged
the authority of government. And again it is not wise in the government
of Mulinuu to have twice attempted to precipitate hostilities, once in
Savaii, once here in the Tuamasanga. The late of the Savaii attempt I
never heard; it seems to have been stillborn. The other passed under my
eyes. A war-party was armed in Apia, and despatched across the island
against Mataafa villages, where it was to seize the women and children.
It was absent for some days, engaged in feasting with those whom it went
out to fight; and returned at last, innocuous and replete. In this
fortunate though undignified ending we may read the fact that the
natives on Laupepa's side are sometimes more wise than their advisers.
Indeed, for our last twelve months of miraculous peace under what seem
to be two rival kings, the credit is due first of all to Mataafa, and
second to the half-heartedness, or the forbearance, or both, of the
natives in the other camp. The voice of the two whites has ever been for
war. They have published at least one incendiary proclamation; they have
armed and sent into the field at least one Samoan war-party; they have
continually besieged captains of war-ships to attack Malie, and the
captains of the war-ships have religiously refused. Thus in the last
twelve months our European rulers have drawn a picture of themselves, as
bearded like the pard, full of strange oaths, and gesticulating like
semaphores; while over against them Mataafa reposes smilingly obstinate,
and their own retainers surround them, frowningly inert. Into the
question of motive I refuse to enter; but if we come to war in these
islands, and with no fresh occasion, it will be a manufactured war, and
one that has been manufactured, against the grain of opinion, by two
foreigners.

For the last and worst of the mistakes on the Laupepa side it would be
unfair to blame any but the king himself. Capable both of virtuous
resolutions and