Plainly Mataafa does not act at random. Plainly, in the depths of his
Samoan mind, he regards his attitude as regular and constitutional. It
may be unexpected, it may be inauspicious, it may be undesirable; but he
thinks it--and perhaps it is--in full accordance with those "laws and
customs of Samoa" ignorantly invoked by the draughtsmen of the Berlin
Act. The point is worth an effort of comprehension; a man's life may yet
depend upon it. Let us conceive, in the first place, that there are five
separate kingships in Samoa, though not always five different kings; and
that though one man, by holding the five royal names, might become king
in _all parts_ of Samoa, there is perhaps no such matter as a kingship of
all Samoa. He who holds one royal name would be, upon this view, as much
a sovereign person as he who should chance to hold the other four; he
would have less territory and fewer subjects, but the like independence
and an equal royalty. Now Mataafa, even if all debatable points were
decided against him, is still Tuiatua, and as such, on this hypothesis, a
sovereign prince. In the second place, the draughtsmen of the Act,
waxing exceeding bold, employed the word "election," and implicitly
justified all precedented steps towards the kingship according with the
"customs of Samoa.
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