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 1885 a
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