University of Virginia Library

APPENDIX.

The author of this volume arrived at Tahiti the very day that the
iniquitous designs of the French were consummated by inducing the
subordinate chiefs, during the absence of their queen, to ratify an artfully
drawn treaty, by which she was virtually deposed. Both menaces
and caresses were employed on this occasion, and the 32-pounders
which peeped out of the portholes of the frigate were the principal
arguments adduced to quiet the scruples of the more conscientious
islanders.

And yet this piratical seizure of Tahiti, with all the woe and desolation
which resulted from it, created not half so great a sensation, at
least in America, as was caused by the proceedings of the English at
the Sandwich Islands. No transaction has ever been more grossly misrepresented
than the events which occurred upon the arrival of Lord
George Paulet at Oahu. During a residence of four months at Honolulu,
the metropolis of the group, the author was in the confidence
of an Englishman who was much employed by his lordship; and great
was the author's astonishment on his arrival at Boston, in the autumn
of 1844, to read the distorted accounts and fabrications which had
produced in the United States so violent an outbreak of indignation
against the English. He deems it, therefore, a mere act of justice
towards a gallant officer briefly to state the leading circumstances connected
with the event in question.

It is needless to rehearse all the abuse that for some time previous to
the spring of 1843 had been heaped upon the British residents, especially
upon Captain Charlton, her Britannic Majesty's consul-general,
by the native authorities of the Sandwich Islands. High in the favour
of the imbecile king at this time was one Dr. Judd, a sanctimonious
apothecary-adventurer, who, with other kindred and influential spirits,
were animated by an inveterate dislike to England. The ascendancy of

a junto of ignorant and designing Methodist elders in the councils of
a half-civilized king, ruling with absolute sway over a nation just poised
between barbarism and civilization, and exposed by the peculiarities of
its relations with foreign states to unusual difficulties, was not precisely
calculated to impart a healthy tone to the policy of the government.

At last matters were brought to such an extremity, through the iniquitous
maladministration of affairs, that the endurance of further
insults and injuries on the part of the British consul was no longer to be
borne. Captain Charlton, insultingly forbidden to leave the islands,
clandestinely withdrew, and arriving at Valaparaiso, conferred with
Rear-Admiral Thomas, the English commander-in-chief on the Pacific
station. In consequence of this communication, Lord George Paulet
was despatched by the admiral in the Carysfort frigate, to enquire into
and correct the alleged abuses. On arriving at his destination, he
sent his first-lieutenant ashore with a letter to the king, couched in
terms of the utmost courtesy, and soliciting the honour of an audience.
The messenger was denied access to his Majesty, and Paulet was coolly
referred to Doctor Judd, and informed that the apothecary was invested
with plenary powers to treat with him. Rejecting this insolent proposition,
his lordship again addressed the king by letter, and renewed his
previous request; but he encountered another repulse. Justly indignant
at this treatment, he penned a third epistle, enumerating the
grievances to be redressed, and demanding a compliance with his requisitions,
under penalty of immediate hostilities.

The government was now obliged to act, and an artful stroke of
policy was decided upon by the despicable counsellors of the king to
entrap the sympathies and rouse the indignation of Christendom. His
Majesty was made to intimate to the British captain that he could not,
as the conscientious ruler of his beloved people, comply with the
arbitrary demands of his lordship, and in deprecation of the horrors of
war, tendered to his acceptance the "provisional cession" of the islands,
subject to the result of the negotiations then pending in London.
Paulet, a bluff and straight-forward sailor, took the king at his word,
and after some preliminary arrangements, entered upon the administration
of Hawiian affairs, in the same firm and benignant spirit which
marked the discipline of his frigate, and which had rendered him the
idol of his ship's company. He soon endeared himself to nearly all
orders of the islanders; but the king and the chiefs, whose feudal sway

over the common people is laboriously sought to be perpetuated by
their missionary advisers, regarded all his proceedings with the most
vigilant animosity. Jealous of his growing popularity, and unable to
counteract it, they endeavoured to assail his reputation abroad by ostentatiously
protesting against his acts, and appealing in Oriental phrase
to the wide universe to witness and compassionate their unparalleled
wrongs.

Heedless of their idle clamours, Lord George Paulet addressed
himself to the task of reconciling the differences among the foreign
residents, remedying their grievances, promoting their mercantile
interests, and ameliorating as far as lay in his power the condition of
the degraded natives. The iniquities he brought to light and instantly
suppressed are too numerous to be here recorded; but one instance may
be mentioned that will give some idea of the lamentable misrule to
which these poor islanders are subjected.

It is well known that the laws at the Sandwich Islands are subject to
the most capricious alterations, which, by confounding all ideas of right
and wrong in the minds of the natives, produce the most pernicious
effects. In no case is this mischief more plainly discernible than in the
continually shifting regulations concerning licentiousness. At one time
the most innocent freedoms between the sexes are punished with fine
and imprisonment; at another the revocation of the statute is followed
by the most open and undisguised profligacy.

It so happened that at the period of Paulet's arrival the Connecticut
blue laws had been for at least three weeks steadily enforced. In consequence
of this, the fort at Honolulu was filled with a great number of
young girls, who were confined there doing penance for their slips from
virtue. Paulet, although at first unwilling to interfere with regulations
having reference solely to the natives themselves, was eventually, by the
prevalence of certain reports, induced to institute a strict inquiry into
the internal administration of General Kekuanoa, governor of the
island of Oahu, one of the pillars of the Hawiian church, and captain
of the fort. He soon ascertained that numbers of the young females
employed during the day at work intended for the benefit of the king,
were at night smuggled over the ramparts of the fort—which on one
side directly overhangs the sea—and were conveyed by stealth on board
such vessels as had contracted with the General to be supplied with
them. Before daybreak they returned to their quarters, and their own

silence with regard to these secret excursions was purchased by a small
portion of those wages of iniquity which were placed in the hands of
Kekuanoa.

The vigour with which the laws concerning licentiousness were at
that period enforced, enabled the General to monopolize in a great measure
the detestable trade in which he was engaged, and there consequently
flowed into his coffers—and some say into those of the government
also—considerable sums of money. It is indeed a lamentable fact,
that the principal revenue of the Hawiian government is derived from
the fines levied upon, or rather the licences taken out by Vice, the
prosperity of which is linked with that of the government. Were the
people to become virtuous the authorities would become poor; but from
present indications there is little apprehension to be entertained on that
score.

Some five months after the date of the cession, the Dublin frigate,
carrying the flag of Rear-Admiral Thomas, entered the harbour of
Honolulu. The excitement that her sudden appearance produced on
shore was prodigious. Three days after her arrival an English sailor
hauled down the red cross which had been flying from the heights of
the fort, and the Hawiian colours were again displayed upon the same
staff. At the same moment the long 42-pounders upon Punchbowl Hill
opened their iron throats in triumphant reply to the thunders of the
five men-of-war in the harbour; and King Kammahamaha III., surrounded
by a splendid group of British and American officers, unfurled
the royal standard to assembled thousands of his subjects, who, attracted
by the imposing military display of the foreigners, had flocked to witness
the formal restoration of the islands to their ancient rulers.

The Admiral, after sanctioning the proceedings of his subaltern, had
brought the authorities to terms; and so removed the necessity of acting
any longer under the provisional cession.

The event was made an occasion of riotous rejoicing by the king and
the principal chiefs, who easily secured a display of enthusiasm from the
inferior orders, by remitting for a time the accustomed severity of the
laws. Royal proclamations in English and Hawiian were placarded in
the streets of Honolulu, and posted up in the more populous villages
of the group, in which his Majesty announced to his loving subjects the
re-establishment of his throne, and called upon them to celebrate it by
breaking through all moral, legal, and religious restraint for ten consecutive

days, during which time all the laws of the land were solemnly
declared to be suspended.

Who that happened to be at Honolulu during those ten memorable
days will ever forget them! The spectacle of universal broad-day
debauchery, which was then exhibited, beggars description. The natives
of the surrounding islands flocked to Honolulu by hundreds, and the
crews of two frigates, opportunely let loose like so many demons to swell
the heathenish uproar, gave the crowning flourish to the scene. It was
a sort of Polynesian saturnalia. Deeds too atrocious to be mentioned
were done at noon-day in the open street, and some of the islanders
caught in the very act of stealing from the foreigners, were, on being
taken to the fort by the aggrieved party, suffered immediately to go at
large and to retain the stolen property—Kekuanoa informing the white
men, with a sardonic grin, that the laws were "hannapa" (tied up).

The history of these ten days reveals in their true colours the character
of the Sandwich islanders, and furnishes an eloquent commentary
on the results which have flowed from the labours of the missionaries.
Freed from the restraints of severe penal laws, the natives almost to a
man had plunged voluntarily into every species of wickedness and excess,
and by their utter disregard of all decency plainly showed, that
although they had been schooled into a seeming submission to the new
order of things, they were in reality as depraved and vicious as ever.

Such were the events which produced in America so general an outbreak
of indignation against the spirited and high-minded Paulet. He
is not the first man who, in the fearless discharge of his duty, has
awakened the senseless clamours of those whose narrow-minded suspicions
blind them to a proper appreciation of measures which unusual exigencies
may have rendered necessary.

It is almost needless to add that the British cabinet never had any
idea of appropriating the islands; and it furnishes a sufficient vindication
of the acts of Lord George Paulet, that he not only received
the unqualified approbation of his own government, but that to this
hour the great body of the Hawiian people invoke blessings on his
head, and look back with gratitude to the time when his liberal and
paternal sway diffused peace and happiness among them.