No one is more swift to
smell trickery than a Samoan; and the thought, that, under the long,
bland, benevolent sentences of the Berlin Act, some trickery lay lurking,
filled him with the breath of opposition. Laupepa seems never to have
been a popular king. Mataafa, on the other hand, holds an unrivalled
position in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen; he was the hero of the
war, he had lain with them in the bush, he had borne the heat and burthen
of the day; they began to claim that he should enjoy more largely the
fruits of victory; his exclusion was believed to be a stroke of German
vengeance, his elevation to the kingship was looked for as the fitting
crown and copestone of the Samoan triumph; and but a little after the
coming of the chief justice, an ominous cry for Mataafa began to arise in
the islands. It is difficult to see what that official could have done
but what he did. He was loyal, as in duty bound, to the treaty and to
Laupepa; and when the orators of the important and unruly islet of Manono
demanded to his face a change of kings, he had no choice but to refuse
them, and (his reproof being unheeded) to suspend the meeting. Whether
by any neglect of his own or the mere force of circumstance, he failed,
however, to secure the sympathy, failed even to gain the confidence, of
Mataafa.
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