The law was to be enforced. The men were condemned to a certain period
in Weber's prison; they had run away; they must now be brought back and
(whatever had become of them in the interval) work out the sentence.
Doubtless Dr. Stuebel's demands were substantially just; but doubtless
also they bore from the outside a great appearance of harshness; and when
the king submitted, the murmurs of the people increased.
But Weber was not yet content. The law had to be enforced; property, or
at least the property of the firm, must be respected. And during an
absence of the consul's, he seems to have drawn up with his own hand, and
certainly first showed to the king, in his own house, a new convention.
Weber here and Weber there. As an able man, he was perhaps in the right
to prepare and propose conventions. As the head of a trading company, he
seems far out of his part to be communicating state papers to a
sovereign. The administration of justice was the colour, and I am
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.
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