The reader will now understand the peculiar significance of a
deputation which should embrace Lauati and the orators of both Malie and
Manono, how it would represent all that is most effective on the Malietoa
side, and all that is most considerable in Samoan politics, except the
opposite feudal party of the Tupua. And in the temptation brought to
bear on Mataafa, even the Tupua was conjoined. Tamasese was dead. His
followers had conceived a not unnatural aversion to all Germans, from
which only the loyal Brandeis is excepted; and a not unnatural admiration
for their late successful adversary. Men of his own blood and clan, men
whom he had fought in the field, whom he had driven from Matautu, who had
smitten him back time and again from before the rustic bulwarks of
Lotoanuu, they approached him hand in hand with their ancestral enemies
and concurred in the same prayer. The treaty (they argued) was not
carried out. The right to elect their king had been granted them; or if
that were denied or suspended, then the right to elect "his successor."
They were dissatisfied with Laupepa, and claimed, "according to the laws
and customs of Samoa," duly to appoint another. The orators of Malie
declared with irritation that their second appointment was alone valid
and Mataafa the sole Malietoa; the whole body of malcontents named him as
their choice for king; and they requested him in consequence to leave
Apia and take up his dwelling in Malie, the name-place of Malietoa; a
step which may be described, to European ears, as placing before the
country his candidacy for the crown.
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