Читать книгу The Legends and Myths of Hawaii: The fables and folk-lore of a strange people - King of Hawaii David Kalakaua - Страница 11

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With this somewhat extended reference to the past of the Hawaiian Islands and their people, it is deemed that a brief allusion to their present political, social, industrial and commercial condition will not be out of place. The legends presented leave the simple but warlike islanders standing naked but not ashamed in the light of civilization suddenly flashed upon them from across the seas. In the darkness behind them are legends and spears; in the light before them are history and law. Let us see what the years since have done for them.

The Hawaiian government of to-day is a mild constitutional monarchy, the ruling family claiming descent from the most ancient and respected of the chiefly blood of Hawaii. The departments of the government are legislative, executive and judicial.

The Legislative Assembly, which meets every two years, consists of representatives chosen by the people, nobles named by the sovereign, and crown ministers. They act in a single body, choosing their presiding officer by ballot, and their proceedings are held jointly in the English and Hawaiian languages, and in both are their laws and proceedings published. As the elective franchise is confined to native and naturalized citizens, the most of the representatives chosen by the people are natives, all of whom are more or less educated, and many of whom are graceful and eloquent debaters. White representatives of accepted sympathy with the natives are occasionally elected, and a majority of the nobles and ministers are white men. The English common law is the basis of their statutes, and their civil and criminal codes are not unlike our own. The Legislature fixes tax, excise and customs charges, and provides by appropriation for all public expenditure. The representatives are paid small salaries, and the Legislature is formally convened and prorogued by the king in person.

Although the present sovereign was elected by the Legislature, for the reason heretofore mentioned, the naming of a successor is left to the occupant of the throne. The king is provided at public expense with a palace and royal guard, and appropriations of money amounting to perhaps forty thousand dollars yearly. He has also some additional income from what are known as crown lands. The two sisters of the king and the daughter of one of them receive from the treasury an aggregate of fifteen thousand five hundred dollars yearly. The king entertains liberally, is generous with his friends and attendants, and probably finds his income no more than sufficient to meet his wants from year to year. His advisers are four Ministers of State and a Privy Council. The Ministry is composed of a Minister of Foreign Affairs, who ranks as premier, Minister of Finance, Minister of Interior, and Attorney-General. The Privy Council is composed of thirty or forty leading citizens appointed by the Crown. In certain matters they have original and exclusive powers. They are convened in council from time to time, but receive no compensation. The most of the Privy Councillors are white men, and embrace almost every nationality. The majority of the ministers of state are usually white men of ability, and their salaries are six thousand dollars per annum each.

The judiciary is composed of a Supreme Court of three members, one of whom is chief-justice and chancellor, Circuit Courts holden in different districts, and minor magistrates’ courts in localities where they are required. The Supreme and Circuit judges are all white men, and but few magistrates are natives. The salaries of the superior judges are respectable, and the most of them are men of ability. The laws, as a rule, are intelligently administered and promptly executed, and life and property are amply protected.

Public schools are numerous throughout the islands, and are largely attended by native children. A considerable proportion of the adult natives are able to read and write their own language, and a number of native newspapers and periodicals are sustained. The English press of Honolulu—the only point of publication—is respectable in ability and enterprise.

Leprosy was brought to the islands by the Chinese about forty years ago, and has become a dangerous and loathsome scourge. Lepers are seldom encountered, however, as they are removed, whenever discovered, to the island of Molokai, where they are humanely cared for by the government. It is a cureless but painless affliction, and is doubtless contagious under certain conditions. Nine-tenths or more of the lepers are either natives or Chinese, and the whole number amounts to perhaps twelve hundred. It is not thought that the malady is increasing, and it is hoped that a careful segregation of the afflicted will in time eradicate the disease from the group.

The commerce of the islands is largely in the hands of foreigners, and the sugar plantations are almost exclusively under their control. There are but few native merchants, the large dealers being Americans, Germans, English and French, while the smaller traders are generally Portuguese and Chinese. There are native lawyers, clerks, mechanics, magistrates and police-men; but the most of the race who are compelled to labor for their support find employment as farm and plantation laborers, stevedores, sailors, coachmen, boatmen, fishermen, gardeners, fruit-pedlars, waiters, soldiers and house-servants, in all of which capacities they are generally industrious, cheerful and honest.

The products of the islands for export are sugar, molasses, rice, bananas, fungus, hides and wool, of an aggregate approximate value of eight million dollars annually. The principal product, however, is sugar, amounting to perhaps one hundred thousand tons yearly. Nine-tenths of the exports of the group find a market in the United States, and four-fifths or more of the imports in value are from the great Republic. The receipts and expenditures of the government are a little less than one million five hundred thousand dollars annually, derived principally from customs duties and direct taxation.

The population of the islands is a little more than eighty thousand, of which about forty-five thousand are natives. The Americans, English, Germans, Norwegians and French number perhaps ten thousand, and Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese from the Azores constitute the most of the remainder.

The postal facilities of the islands are ample and reliable. Inter-island steamers, of which there are many, convey the mails throughout the group at regular intervals, and the San Franciscan and Australian steamers afford a punctual and trustworthy service with the rest of the world. The islands have a postal money-order system reaching within and beyond their boundaries, and are connected with the Universal Postal Union.

Over twenty thousand of the inhabitants of the group are centred in Honolulu, the capital of the kingdom, and its beautiful and dreamy suburb of Waikiki. The business portions of the city, with their macadamized and lighted streets, and blocks of brick and stone buildings, have a thrifty and permanent appearance, while the eastern suburbs, approaching the hills with a gentle ascent, abound in charming residences embowered in palms. Small mountain streams run through the city and afford an abundant supply of sweet water, which is further augmented by a number of flowing artesian wells. With a temperature ranging from seventy to ninety degrees, Honolulu, with its substantial churches and public buildings, its air of affluence and dreamy quiet, is a delightful place of residence to those who enjoy the heat and languor of the tropics.

In the midst of these evidences of prosperity and advancement it is but too apparent that the natives are steadily decreasing in numbers and gradually losing their hold upon the fair land of their fathers. Within a century they have dwindled from four hundred thousand healthy and happy children of nature, without care and without want, to a little more than a tenth of that number of landless, hopeless victims to the greed and vices of civilization. They are slowly sinking under the restraints and burdens of their surroundings, and will in time succumb to social and political conditions foreign to their natures and poisonous to their blood. Year by year their footprints will grow more dim along the sands of their reef-sheltered shores, and fainter and fainter will come their simple songs from the shadows of the palms, until finally their voices will be heard no more for ever. And then, if not before—and no human effort can shape it otherwise—the Hawaiian Islands, with the echoes of their songs and the sweets of their green fields, will pass into the political, as they are now firmly within the commercial, system of the great American Republic.

February, 1887.