CHAPTER XXIX.

ACCESSION OF KAMÉHAMÉHA V.

THE 'COUP D'ÉTAT.'

NDER the style and title of Kaméhaméha V.,

UNDER

Prince Lot Kaméhaméha, as he had been named by suggestion of the American missionaries-Prince Lota, as he was called by the native people-succeeded to the Hawaiian throne, on the 30th of November, 1863. Born on the 11th of December 1830, the present King was three years the senior of his deceased brother. With many features of resemblance, there were sufficient. points of difference in his character to make him unlike Kaméhaméha IV. Possessed of great energy and firmness, he had shown large administrative capacity as Minister of Interior; and he still shows an unusual disregard for the mere externals of royalty, though he loves and maintains the substantial part-the power of his position.

The new King's first act was one of clemency. He liberated from prison certain persons confined under judicial sentence, and restored others to their civil rights which they had forfeited. Prisoners and malcontents seem, in all parts of the world, to have a valuable interest in the death of kings. His next step He then turned

was to reorganize the Board of Health. his thoughts to a subject which, indeed, had occupied

THE CONSTITUTION AS IT WAS.

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them long before-the constitution of the kingdom, and he was dissatisfied with it.

By the articles of the constitution, given to the people in 1852 by Kaméhaméha III., it was incumbent on the successor to the vacant throne to take an oath that he would maintain the constitution of the kingdom whole and inviolate, and would govern in conformity therewith. The King abstained from taking this oath. There were components in the existing constitution which were in his mind objectionable, and he resolved to seize the opportunity for making reforms and bringing the kingdom into farther accordance with the most enlightened European monarchies. During his brother's reign, he had had leisure and means for observing the working of a system which contained the elements of democracy and puritanism. It will be necessary to recall in a few words the growth of this political system. Up to the year 1839, the Hawaiian Islands were governed by an absolute monarch, and upon strictly feudal principles. In that year the efforts of the American missionaries and ex-missionaries, who had given much useful assistance in governing the country, worked so far on the patriotic and bon-vivant King, Kaméhaméha III., as to induce him to sign a Bill of Rights, and the following year, to grant a constitution, by which absolute rule was yielded up, and irresponsible power exchanged for government by the three estates of king, nobles, and people.

Theoretically considered, the rights of men living in societies are hexagons. This is deducible from the antecedent proposition that the right of each individual, in isolation, extends as a circle round the person; and were the wills of all men of equal intensity, the circles would be of equal diameter. By the gravitating force

of society, a pressure being exerted on all the circles, they become converted into hexagons, coterminous and, again theoretically, impenetrable. But, in practice, stronger wills extend larger circles and harder outlines. Thus, other right-cells are crushed, deformed, and obliterated; and the will of a leviathan annihilates the operative will of millions, reducing them to nonentities, or mere rudimentary existences-nails, and screws, and unseen bricks in the social pyramid. It is rare indeed to find the leviathan voluntarily denuding himself of his monopoly. It is sometimes wrung from him by knowledge, which gradually re-animating the dead nails and screws, and restoring the elasticity of the crushed. dissepiments, restores in part the personality of the multitude, and clothes them with some defigurated rights.

The King had never been out of his own small dominions. He had to be guided by the teaching and advice of the active-minded men who had already volunteered to assist in holding the reins of government, and who showed that they would not be averse to take the ribbons entirely into their own hands upon occasion. But at that time the King's advisers did not prompt to greater change than the conversion of absolutism into limited monarchy.

The scheme of government thus produced was naturally a hybrid one. Its promoters were Americans; they were missionaries, or persons who, having been missionaries, had left that calling for official or officious life. The constitution was a mosaic, to which the Pentateuch, the British Government, and the American Declaration of Independence each contributed a part. Yet, in spite of manifold defects, it was a revolution in the right direction. It lasted twelve years; and under it the nation advanced in civilization and prosperity.

GROWTH OF A CONSTITUTION.

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The administration consisted of four departments; there was a minister of interior affairs, who was also premier; a minister of foreign relations, of finance, of public instruction; and an attorney-general. Statute laws were passed, and a little tinkering of the constitution began.

It seemed the fate of all political opinion, when acclimatized in Hawaii, to suffer a sea change.' So we see a tyrant taking up limited monarchy, democrats from the United States constituting a kingdom; and now we are to witness an early and ardent member of the Reform Club converted into a staunch Conservative, and an American attorney-general writing himself in one of his letters a rank Tory.'

With the infusion of fresh blood, it came to pass that, in 1850, the King recommended a new constitution, and appointed a commission of three persons to frame a new model. It was perfected, and, in 1852, was signed by the King, who died in something less than two years afterwards. This constitution was an advance on the former one; but a good deal of the Levitical element and some revolutionary rags remained in it. Dr. Judd was one of the three commissioners, his coadjutors being the chief Joane Ii, and the Chief Justice Lee. The two former of this triad will make their reappearance hereafter.

It happened that while much discussion was going on in Honolulu about the proposed new constitution, the Hawaiian consulate in China was represented by the senior member of the commercial house of Jardine and Company. At the same time, Sir John Bowring was governor of Hong Kong; and a correspondence was brought about between the latter and Mr. Wyllie on the same subject, and a draft of the constitution was

sent to Sir John for his opinion. The editor of Jeremy Bentham objected to the opening sentence, in which it is asserted that all men are created free and equal. Bentham had himself been the correspondent of several of the American Presidents; and in his Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights,' exposed the pretension that all men are born free and equal.' 'No man ever was, is, or will be, born free; all are born helpless children, in a state of absolute subjection to parents, and, in many countries as slaves, in vassalage to owners; and as to equality, the statement is absurd, the condition of no two men, to say nothing of all, being equal, in the many gradations which exist, of wealth and poverty, servants and masters, influence and position.' Sir John, who had been Bentham's most intimate friend and executor, quoted the views of his master, which also appeared to his own mind incontestable. In spite, however, of any efforts which Mr. Wyllie could make, supported by the China correspondence, the constitution commenced with the old assertion, God hath created all men free and equal.' Article 12 pronounced that, 'No person who imports a slave, or slaves, into the king's dominions, shall ever enjoy any civil or political rights in this realm.' Article 19 prescribed, 'All elections of the people shall be by ballot;' and Article 78 established manhood-suffrage. Moreover, the king's power was checked and controlled by the strange institution of the Kuhina-Nui-an invention which, if borrowed from any other nation, must have come from Japan. This regulator' to the government machine, who stood above ministers, and, as it were, on the uppermost step of the throne, might be a man or a woman-indeed, was generally the latter. Her power at times must have been not a

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