Otto Martin was at this time magistrate in the municipality.  The post was held in turn by the three nationalities; Martin had served far beyond his term, and should have been succeeded months before by an American.  To make the change it was necessary to hold a meeting of the municipal board, consisting of the three consuls, each backed by an assessor.  And for some time these meetings had been evaded or refused by the German consul.  As long as it was agreed to continue Martin, Becker had attended regularly; as soon as Sewall indicated a wish for his removal, Becker tacitly suspended the municipality by refusing to appear.  This policy was now the more necessary; for if the whole existence of the municipality were a check on the freedom of the new government, it was plainly less so when the power to enforce and punish lay in German hands.  For some while back the Malietoa flag had been flown on the municipal building:  Becker denies this; I am sorry; my information obliges me to suppose he is in error.  Sewall, with post-mortem loyalty to the past, insisted that this flag should be continued.  And Becker immediately made his point.  He declared, justly enough, that the proposal was hostile, and argued that it was impossible he should attend a meeting under a flag with which his sovereign was at war.  Upon one occasion of urgency, he was invited to meet the two other consuls at the British consulate; even this he refused; and for four months the municipality slumbered, Martin still in office.  In the month of October, in consequence, the British and American ratepayers announced they would refuse to pay.  Becker doubtless rubbed his hands.  On Saturday, the 10th, the chief Tamaseu, a Malietoa man of substance and good character, was arrested on a charge of theft believed to be vexatious, and cast by Martin into the municipal prison.  He sent to Moors, who was his tenant and owed him money at the time, for bail.  Moors applied to Sewall, ranking consul.  After some search, Martin was found and refused to consider bail before the Monday morning.  Whereupon Sewall demanded the keys from the gaoler, accepted Moors’s verbal recognisances, and set Tamaseu free.

Things were now at a deadlock; and Becker astonished every one by agreeing to a meeting on the 14th.  It seems he knew what to expect.  Writing on the 13th at least, he prophesies that the meeting will be held in vain, that the municipality must lapse, and the government of Tamasese step in.  On the 14th, Sewall left his consulate in time, and walked some part of the way to the place of meeting in company with Wilson, the English pro-consul.  But he had forgotten a paper, and in an evil hour returned for it alone.  Wilson arrived without him, and Becker broke up the meeting for want of a quorum.  There was some unedifying disputation as to whether he had waited ten or twenty minutes, whether he had been officially or unofficially informed by Wilson that Sewall was on the way, whether the statement