APPENDIX.
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The author of this volume arrived at Tahiti the very day that the iniquitous
designs of the French were consummated by inducing the subordinate
chiefs, during the absence of their queen, to ratify an artfully drawn treaty,
by which she was virtually deposed. Both menaces and caresses were
employed on this occasion, and the 32-pounders which peeped out of the
portholes of the frigate were the principal arguments adduced to quiet the
scruples of the more conscientious islanders.
And yet this piratical seizure of Tahiti, with all the woe and desolation
which resulted from it, created not half so great a sensation, at least in
America, as was caused by the proceedings of the English at the Sandwich
Islands. No transaction has ever been so grossly misrepresented as the
events which occurred upon the arrival of Lord George Paulet at Oahu.
During a residence of four months at Honolulu, the metropolis of the group,
the author was in the confidence of an Englishman who was much employed
by his lordship; and great was the author's astonishment on his
arrival at Boston, in the autumn of 1844, to read the distorted accounts and
fabrications which had produced in the United States so violent an outbreak
of indignation against the English. He deems it, therefore, a mere
act of justice towards a gallant officer briefly to state the leading circumstances
connected with the event in question.
It is needless to rehearse all the abuse that for some time previous to
the spring of 1843 had been heaped upon the British residents, especially
upon Captain Charlton, her Britannic Majesty's consul-general, by the
native authorities of the Sandwich Islands. High in the favor of the imbecile
king at this time was one Dr. Judd, a sanctimonious apothecary-adventurer,
who, with other kindred and influential spirits, were animated
by an inveterate dislike to England. The ascendency of a junto of ignorant
and designing Methodist elders in the councils of a half-civilized king,
ruling with absolute sway over a nation just poised between barbarism and
civilisation, and exposed by the peculiarities of its relations with foreign
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states to unusual difficulties, was not precisely calculated to impart a healthy
tone to the policy of the government.
At last matters were brought to such an extremity, through the iniquitous
maladministration of affairs, that the endurance of further insults and injuries
on the part of the British consul was no longer to be borne. Captain
Charlton, insultingly forbidden to leave the islands, clandestinely withdrew,
and arriving at Valparaiso, conferred with Rear-Admiral Thomas,
the English commander-in-chief on the Pacific station. In consequence
of this communication, Lord George Paulet was despatched by the admiral
in the Carysfort frigate, to inquire into and correct the alleged abuses.
On arriving at his destination, he sent his first-lieutenant ashore with a letter
to the king, couched in terms of the utmost courtesy, and soliciting the
honor of an audience. The messenger was denied access to his Majesty,
and Paulet was coolly referred to Doctor Judd, and informed that the apothecary
was invested with plenary powers to treat with him. Rejecting
this insolent proposition, his lordship again addressed the king by letter,
and renewed his previous request; but he encountered another repulse.
Justly indignant at this treatment, he penned a third epistle, enumerating
the grievances to be redressed, and demanding a compliance with his requisitions,
under penalty of immediate hostilities.
The government was now obliged to act, and an artful stroke of policy
was decided upon by the despicable counsellors of the king to entrap the
sympathies and rouse the indignation of Christendom. His Majesty was
made to intimate to the British captain that he could not, as the conscientious
ruler of his beloved people, comply with the arbitrary demands of his
lordship, and in deprecation of the horrors of war, tendered to his acceptance
the “provisional cession” of the islands, subject to the result of the
negotiations then pending in London. Paulet, a bluff and straight-forward
sailor, took the king at his word, and after some preliminary arrangements,
entered upon the administration of Hawiian affairs, in the same firm and
benignant spirit which marked the discipline of his frigate, and which
had rendered him the idol of his ship's company. He soon endeared himself
to nearly all orders of the islanders; but the king and the chiefs, whose
feudal sway over the common people is laboriously sought to be perpetuated
by their missionary advisers, regarded all his proceedings with the
most vigilant animosity. Jealous of his growing popularity, and unable to
counteract it, they endeavored to assail his reputation abroad by ostentatiously
protesting against his acts, and appealing in Oriental phrase to the
wide universe to witness and compassionate their unparalleled wrongs.
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Heedless of their idle clamors, Lord George Paulet addressed himself to
the task of reconciling the differences among the foreign residents, remedying
their grievances, promoting their mercantile interests, and ameliorating
as far as lay in his power the condition of the degraded natives. The
iniquities he brought to light and instantly suppressed are too numerous
to be here recorded; but one instance may be mentioned that will give
some idea of the lamentable misrule to which these poor islanders are subjected.
It is well known that the laws of the Sandwich Islands are subject to
the most capricious alterations, which, by confounding all ideas of right
and wrong in the minds of the natives, produce the most pernicious effects.
In no case is this mischief more plainly discernible than in the continually
shifting regulations concerning licentiousness. At one time the most innocent
freedoms between the sexes are punished with fine and imprisonment;
at another the revocation of the statute is followed by the most open
and undisguised profligacy.
It so happened that at the period of Paulet's arrival the Connecticut blue
laws had been for at least three weeks steadily enforced. In consequence
of this, the fort at Honolulu was filled with a great number of young girls,
who were confined there doing penance for their slips from virtue. Paulet,
although at first unwilling to interfere with regulations having reference
solely to the natives themselves, was eventually, by the prevalence of certain
reports, induced to institute a strict inquiry into the internal administration
of General Kekuanoa, governor of the island of Oahu, one of the
pillars of the Hawiian church, and captain of the fort. He soon ascertained
that numbers of the young females employed during the day at work
intended for the benefit of the king, were at night smuggled over the ramparts
of the fort—which on one side directly overhangs the sea—and were
conveyed by stealth on board such vessels as had contracted with the General
to be supplied with them. Before daybreak they returned to their
quarters, and their own silence with regard to these secret excursions was
purchased by a small portion of those wages of iniquity which were placed
in the hands of Kekuanoa.
The vigor with which the laws concerning licentiousness were at that
period enforced, enabled the General to monopolize in a great measure the
detestable trade in which he was engaged, and there consequently flowed
into his coffers—and some say into those of the government also—considerable
sums of money. It is indeed a lamentable fact, that the principal
revenue of the Hawiian government is derived from the fine levied upon,
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or rather the licenses taken out by Vice, the prosperity of which is linked
with that of the government. Were the people to become virtuous the
authorities would become poor; but from present indications there is little
apprehension to be entertained on that score.
Some five months after the date of the cession the Dublin frigate, carrying
the flag of Rear-Admiral Thomas, entered the harbor of Honolulu.
The excitement that her sudden appearance produced on shore was prodigious.
Three days after her arrival an English sailor hauled down the red
cross which had been flying from the heights of the fort, and the Hawiian
colors were again displayed upon the same staff. At the same moment the
long 42-pounders upon Punchbowl Hill opened their iron throats in triumphant
reply to the thunders of the five men-of-war in the harbor; and King
Kammahammaha III., surrounded by a splendid group of British and American
officers, unfurled the royal standard to assembled thousands of his subjects,
who, attracted by the imposing military display of the foreigners, had
flocked to witness the formal restoration of the islands to their ancient
rulers.
The Admiral, after sanctioning the proceedings of his subaltern, had
brought the authorities to terms; and so removed the necessity of acting
any longer under the provisional cession.
The event was made an occasion of riotous rejoicing by the king and the
principal chiefs, who easily secured a display of enthusiasm from the inferior
orders, by remitting for a time the accustomed severity of the laws.
Royal proclamations in English and Hawiian were placarded in the streets
of Honolulu, and posted up in the more populous villages of the group, in
which his majesty announced to his loving subjects the reestablishment of
his throne, and called upon them to celebrate it by breaking through all
moral, legal, and religious restraint for ten consecutive days, during which
time all the laws of the land were solemnly declared to be suspended.
Who that happened to be at Honolulu during those ten memorable days,
will ever forget them! The spectacle of universal broad-day debauchery,
which was then exhibited, beggars description. The natives of the surrounding
islands flocked to Honolulu by hundreds, and the crews of two
frigates opportunely let loose like so many demons to swell the heathenish
uproar, gave the crowning flourish to the scene. It was a sort of Polynesian
saturnalia. Deeds too atrocious to be mentioned were done at noonday
in the open street, and some of the islanders caught in the very act of
stealing from the foreigners, were, on being taken to the fort by the aggrieved
party, suffered immediately to go at large and retain the stolen property—
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Kekuanoa informing the white men, with a sardonic grin, that the laws
were “hampa” (tied up).
The history of these ten days reveals in their true colors the character of
the Sandwich Islanders, and furnishes an eloquent commentary on the
results which have flowed from the labors of the missionaries. Freed from
the restraints of severe penal laws, the natives almost to a man had plunged
voluntarily into every species of wickedness and excess, and by their utter
disregard of all decency plainly showed, that although they had been
schooled into a seeming submission to the new order of things, they were
in reality as depraved and vicious as ever.
Such were the events which produced in America so general an outbreak
of indignation against the spirited and high-minded Paulet. He is not the
first man who, in the fearless discharge of his duty, has awakened the
senseless clamors of those whose narrow-minded suspicions blind them to
a proper appreciation of measures which unusual exigencies may have
rendered necessary.
It is almost needless to add that the British cabinet never had any idea
of appropriating the islands; and it furnishes a sufficient vindication of the
acts of Lord George Paulet, that he not only received the unqualified approbation
of his own government, but that to this hour the great body of
the Hawiian people invoke blessings on his head, and look back with gratitude
to the time when his liberal and paternal sway diffused peace and
happiness among them.
THE END.
Back matter
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Melville, Herman, 1819-1891 [1846], A peep at Plynesian life, volume 2 (Wiley & Putnam, New York) [word count] [eaf273v2].
