Early in January 1891 this period of expectancy was brought to an end by the arrival of Conrad Cedarcrantz, chief justice of Samoa.  The event was hailed with acclamation, and there was much about the new official to increase the hopes already entertained.  He was seen to be a man of culture and ability; in public, of an excellent presence—­in private, of a most engaging cordiality.  But there was one point, I scarce know whether to say of his character or policy, which immediately and disastrously affected public feeling in the islands.  He had an aversion, part judicial, part perhaps constitutional, to haste; and he announced that, until he should have well satisfied his own mind, he should do nothing; that he would rather delay all than do aught amiss.  It was impossible to hear this without academical approval; impossible to hear it without practical alarm.  The natives desired to see activity; they desired to see many fair speeches taken on a body of deeds and works of benefit.  Fired by the event of the war, filled with impossible hopes, they might have welcomed in that hour a ruler of the stamp of Brandeis, breathing hurry, perhaps dealing blows.  And the chief justice, unconscious of the fleeting opportunity, ripened his opinions deliberately in Mulinuu; and had been already the better part of half a year in the islands before he went through the form of opening his court.  The curtain had risen; there was no play.  A reaction, a chill sense of disappointment, passed about the island; and intrigue, one moment suspended, was resumed.

In the Berlin Act, the three Powers recognise, on the threshold, “the independence of the Samoan government, and the free right of the natives to elect their chief or king and choose their form of government.”  True, the text continues that, “in view of the difficulties that surround an election in the present disordered condition of the government,” Malietoa Laupepa shall be recognised as king, “unless the three Powers shall by common accord otherwise declare.”  But perhaps few natives have followed it so far, and even those who have, were possibly all cast abroad again by the next clause:  “and his successor shall be duly elected according to the laws and customs of Samoa.”  The right to elect, freely given in one sentence, was suspended in the next, and a line or so further on appeared to be reconveyed by a side-wind.  The reason offered for suspension was ludicrously false; in May 1889, when Sir Edward Malet moved the matter in the conference, the election of Mataafa was not only certain to have been peaceful, it could not have been opposed; and behind the English puppet it was easy to suspect the hand of Germany.  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,