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.
"Malietoa," one of the chiefs had written, "we know well we are in
bondage to the great governments." It was now thought one tyrant might
be better than three, and any one preferable to Germany. On the 5th
November 1885, accordingly, Laupepa, Tamasese, and forty-eight high
chiefs met in secret, and the supremacy of Samoa was secretly offered to
Great Britain for the second time in history. Laupepa and Tamasese still
figured as king and vice-king in the eyes of Dr. Stuebel; in their own,
they had secretly abdicated, were become private persons, and might do
what they pleased without binding or dishonouring their country. On the
morrow, accordingly, they did public humiliation in the dust before the
consulate, and five days later signed the convention. The last was done,
it is claimed, upon an impulse. The humiliation, which it appeared to