Debated, I say--not decided; for even a small minority will often strike
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.
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