It was the more unfortunate they should have early fallen in a difficulty with the chief justice.  The original ground of this is supposed to be a difference of opinion as to the import of the Berlin Act, on which, as a layman, it would be unbecoming if I were to offer an opinion.  But it must always seem as if the chief justice had suffered himself to be irritated beyond the bounds of discretion.  It must always seem as if his original attempt to deprive the commissioners of the services of a secretary and the use of a safe were even senseless; and his step in printing and posting a proclamation denying their jurisdiction were equally impolitic and undignified.  The dispute had a secondary result worse than itself.  The gentleman appointed to be Natives’ Advocate shared the chief justice’s opinion, was his close intimate, advised with him almost daily, and drifted at last into an attitude of opposition to his colleagues.  He suffered himself besides (being a layman in law) to embrace the interest of his clients with something of the warmth of a partisan.  Disagreeable scenes occurred in court; the advocate was more than once reproved, he was warned that his consultations with the judge of appeal tended to damage his own character and to lower the credit of the appellate court.  Having lost some cases on which he set importance, it should seem that he spoke unwisely among natives.  A sudden cry of colour prejudice went up; and Samoans were heard to assure each other that it was useless to appear before the Land Commission, which was sworn to support the whites.

This deplorable state of affairs was brought to an end by the departure from Samoa of the Natives’ Advocate.  He was succeeded pro tempore by a young New Zealander, E. W. Gurr, not much more versed in law than himself, and very much less so in Samoan.  Whether by more skill or better fortune, Gurr has been able in the course of a few weeks to recover for the natives several important tracts of land; and the prejudice against the Commission seems to be abating as fast as it arose.  I should not omit to say that, in the eagerness of the original advocate, there was much that was amiable; nor must I fail to point out how much there was of blindness.  Fired by the ardour of pursuit, he seems to have regarded his immediate clients as the only natives extant and the epitome and emblem of the Samoan race.  Thus, in the case that was the most exclaimed against as “an injustice to natives,” his client, Puaauli, was certainly nonsuited.  But in that intricate affair who lost the money?  The German firm.  And who got the land?  Other natives.  To twist such a decision into evidence, either of a prejudice against Samoans or a partiality to whites, is to keep one eye shut and have the other bandaged.