And there is more behind.Not only is theft from the plantations regarded rather as a lark and peccadillo,the idea of theft in itself is not very clearly present to these communists;and as to the punishment of crime in general,a great gulf of opinion divides the natives from ourselves.Indigenous punishments were short and sharp.Death,deportation by the primitive method of setting the criminal to sea in a canoe,fines,and in Samoa itself the penalty of publicly biting a hot,ill-smelling root,comparable to a rough forfeit in a children's game -these are approved.The offender is killed,or punished and forgiven.We,on the other hand,harbour malice for a period of years:continuous shame attaches to the criminal;even when he is doing his best -even when he is submitting to the worst form of torture,regular work -he is to stand aside from life and from his family in dreadful isolation.
These ideas most Polynesians have accepted in appearance,as they accept other ideas of the whites;in practice,they reduce it to a farce.I have heard the French resident in the Marquesas in talk with the French gaoler of Tai-o-hae:"EH BIEN,OU SONT VOSPRISONNIERES?-JE CROIS,MON COMMANDANT,QU'ELLES SONT ALLEESQUELQUE PART FAIRE UNE VISITE."And the ladies would be welcome.
This is to take the most savage of Polynesians;take some of the most civilised.In Honolulu,convicts labour on the highways in piebald clothing,gruesome and ridiculous;and it is a common sight to see the family of such an one troop out,about the dinner hour,wreathed with flowers and in their holiday best,to picnic with their kinsman on the public wayside.The application of these outlandish penalties,in fact,transfers the sympathy to the offender.Remember,besides,that the clan system,and that imperfect idea of justice which is its worst feature,are still lively in Samoa;that it is held the duty of a judge to favour kinsmen,of a king to protect his vassals;and the difficulty of getting a plantation thief first caught,then convicted,and last of all punished,will appear.
During the early 'eighties,the Germans looked upon this system with growing irritation.They might see their convict thrust in gaol by the front door;they could never tell how soon he was enfranchised by the back;and they need not be the least surprised if they met him,a few days after,enjoying the delights of a MALANGA.It was a banded conspiracy,from the king and the vice-king downward,to evade the law and deprive the Germans of their profits.In 1883,accordingly,the consul,Dr.Stuebel,extorted a convention on the subject,in terms of which Samoans convicted of offences against German subjects were to be confined in a private gaol belonging to the German firm.To Dr.Stuebel it seemed simple enough:the offenders were to be effectually punished,the sufferers partially indemnified.To the Samoans,the thing appeared no less simple,but quite different:"Malietoa was selling Samoans to Misi Ueba."What else could be expected?Here was a private corporation engaged in making money;to it was delegated,upon a question of profit and loss,one of the functions of the Samoan crown;and those who make anomalies must look for comments.
Public feeling ran unanimous and high.Prisoners who escaped from the private gaol were not recaptured or not returned and Malietoa hastened to build a new prison of his own,whither he conveyed,or pretended to convey,the fugitives.In October 1885a trenchant state paper issued from the German consulate.Twenty prisoners,the consul wrote,had now been at large for eight months from Weber's prison.It was pretended they had since then completed their term of punishment elsewhere.Dr.Stuebel did not seek to conceal his incredulity;but he took ground beyond;he declared the point irrelevant.The law was to be enforced.The men were condemned to a certain period in Weber's prison;they had run away;they must now be brought back and (whatever had become of them in the interval)work out the sentence.Doubtless Dr.Stuebel's demands were substantially just;but doubtless also they bore from the outside a great appearance of harshness;and when the king submitted,the murmurs of the people increased.
But Weber was not yet content.The law had to be enforced;property,or at least the property of the firm,must be respected.
And during an absence of the consul's,he seems to have drawn up with his own hand,and certainly first showed to the king,in his own house,a new convention.Weber here and Weber there.As an able man,he was perhaps in the right to prepare and propose conventions.As the head of a trading company,he seems far out of his part to be communicating state papers to a sovereign.The administration of justice was the colour,and I am willing to believe the purpose,of the new paper;but its effect was to depose the existing government.A council of two Germans and two Samoans were to be invested with the right to make laws and impose taxes as might be "desirable for the common interest of the Samoan government and the German residents."The provisions of this council the king and vice-king were to sign blindfold.And by a last hardship,the Germans,who received all the benefit,reserved a right to recede from the agreement on six months'notice;the Samoans,who suffered all the loss,were bound by it in perpetuity.
I can never believe that my friend Dr.Stuebel had a hand in drafting these proposals;I am only surprised he should have been a party to enforcing them,perhaps the chief error in these islands of a man who has made few.And they were enforced with a rigour that seems injudicious.The Samoans (according to their own account)were denied a copy of the document;they were certainly rated and threatened;their deliberation was treated as contumacy;two German war-ships lay in port,and it was hinted that these would shortly intervene.
Succeed in frightening a child,and he takes refuge in duplicity.
