beyond question that provincial governors more than once issued orders forbidding Samoans to take money from “the New Zealand firm.”  These, when they were brought to his notice, Brandeis disowned, and he is entitled to be heard.  No man can live long in Samoa and not have his honesty impugned.  But the accusations against Brandeis’s veracity are both few and obscure.  I believe he was as straight as his sword.  The governors doubtless issued these orders, but there were plenty besides Brandeis to suggest them.  Every wandering clerk from the firm’s office, every plantation manager, would be dinning the same story in the native ear.  And here again the initial blunder hung about the neck of Brandeis, a ton’s weight.  The natives, as well as the whites, had seen their premier masquerading on a stool in the office; in the eyes of the natives, as well as in those of the whites, he must always have retained the mark of servitude from that ill-judged passage; and they would be inclined to look behind and above him, to the great house of Misi Ueba.  The government was like a vista of puppets.  People did not trouble with Tamasese, if they got speech with Brandeis; in the same way, they might not always trouble to ask Brandeis, if they had a hint direct from Misi Ueba.  In only one case, though it seems to have had many developments, do I find the premier personally committed.  The MacArthurs claimed the copra of Fasitotai on a district mortgage of three hundred dollars.  The German firm accepted a mortgage of the whole province of Aana, claimed the copra of Fasitotai as that of a part of Aana, and were supported by the government.  Here Brandeis was false to his own principle, that personal and village debts should come before provincial.  But the case occurred before the promulgation of the law, and was, as a matter of fact, the cause of it; so the most we can say is that he changed his mind, and changed it for the better.  If the history of his government be considered—­how it originated in an intrigue between the firm and the consulate, and was (for the firm’s sake alone) supported by the consulate with foreign bayonets—­the existence of the least doubt on the man’s action must seem marvellous.  We should have looked to find him playing openly and wholly into their hands; that he did not, implies great independence and much secret friction; and I believe (if the truth were known) the firm would be found to have been disgusted with the stubbornness of its intended tool, and Brandeis often impatient of the demands of his creators.

But I may seem to exaggerate the degree of white opposition.  And it is true that before fate overtook the Brandeis government, it appeared to enjoy the fruits of victory in Apia; and one dissident, the unconquerable Moors, stood out alone to refuse his taxes.  But the victory was in appearance only; the opposition was latent; it found vent in talk, and thus reacted on the natives; upon the least excuse, it was ready to