a clan or a province impotent. In the midst of these ineffective
councils the chief sits usually silent: a kind of a gagged audience for
village orators. And the deliverance of the fono seems (for the moment)
to be final. The absolute chiefs of Tahiti and Hawaii were addressed as
plain John and Thomas; the chiefs of Samoa are surfeited with lip-honour,
but the seat and extent of their actual authority is hard to find.

It is so in the members of the state, and worse in the belly. The idea
of a sovereign pervades the air; the name we have; the thing we are not
so sure of. And the process of election to the chief power is a mystery.
Certain provinces have in their gift certain high titles, or _names_, as
they are called. These can only be attributed to the descendants of
particular lines. Once granted, each name conveys at once the
principality (whatever that be worth) of the province which bestows it,
and counts as one suffrage towards the general sovereignty of Samoa. To
be indubitable king, they say, or some of them say,--I find few in
perfect harmony,--a man should resume five of these names in his own
person. But the case is purely hypothetical; local jealousy forbids its
occurrence. There are rival provinces, far more concerned in the
prosecution of their rivalry than in the choice of a right man for king.
If one of these shall have bestowed its name on competitor A, it will be
the signal and the sufficient reason for the other to bestow its name on
competitor B or C. The majority of Savaii and that of Aana are thus in
perennial opposition. Nor is this all. In 1881, Laupepa, the present
king, held the three names of Malietoa, Natoaitele, and Tamasoalii;
Tamasese held that of Tuiaana; and Mataafa that of Tuiatua. Laupepa had
thus a majority of suffrages; he held perhaps as high a proportion as can
be hoped in these distracted islands; and he counted among the number the
preponderant name of Malietoa. Here, if ever, was an election. Here, if
a king were at all possible, was the king. And yet the natives were not