Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 174, 17 April 1891 — Page 4

KA LEO O KA LAHUI.

"E Mau ke Ea o ka Aina i ka Pono."

 

 

Party Government.

   It was an error of the revolutionists of 1887, that in their reformation of the Constitution, they did not more completely remodel the system under which the Cabinet Ministers hold power.  The present system is decidedly faulty as has been made glaringly apparent under the two last administrations.  The Premier is so by courtesy only, and maybe and has been utterly ignored by his colleagues, whose selection and appointment were in no way controlled by him.  So, in fact, the constitution provides for any government, for independent tyrants who knows no sovereign or party, and dare even to defy parliament between sessions.  The public must submit to the caprice of four uncontrolled men each riding his own hobby unhindered even by any rule of majority in concerted action.  The intention of a constitution is to provide a government by a responsible cabinet ministry who are the virtual leaders of the Legislature that is supreme in all things.  Such is the recognized principle in the government of Great Britain.

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   In the time of William and Mary position of the ministers was exactly like that of our ministers under Kalakaua prior to 1887.  The ministers were not servants of the Legislature or of the people, but the senile servants of the Crown.  It was to the King they looked for direction and to the King alone they held themselves responsible.  The commons chafed under such a state of things and their fickle temper was such that it drove William and his ministers to despair till Sunderland had the sagacity to suggest, and William the wisdom to apply the remedy, the appointment of a cabinet representative of the majority of the popular chamber.  This was the first step towards responsible cabinet government and the principle has been maintained ever since.  Our constitution is defective in that it does not provide that a new cabinet shall be selected from among the leaders of the prevailing political party, for we have seen that no cabinet can be successful that is not representative of the political party through whom they acquire power.

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   The Thurston cabinet was a strictly party one, but they were nominated by a revolutionary caucus and thrust upon the public, and being a party of spoils they met with a natural reaction that took them down.  But the Brown-Cummins cabinet was the worst abortion that ever took the reigns of power in Hawaii:  They were not the King’s free selection; they represented no party or known priciples or policy:  They ignored and insulted the National Party to whom they owed their elevation to office:  and they apparently constituted themseleves an independent party of four, who proposed to rule in defiance of King, party or public opinion.  By such conduct they rendered themselves odious to the people, and their downfall was a natural consequence.  This career furnished the most apt illustration of the defect of our system of government.

   The present cabinet is built more on party lines, but still it is not fairly representative and it remains to be seen whether a future Legislature will approve of the Queen’s selection.  The political campaign of 1890 was probably the first in which party lines were distinctly and sharply drawn and a fair struggle made at the ballot box.  The people were divided in two strong parties with their platforms, declarations, newspapers and speeches, and both sides entered the campaign with energy and spirit.  The national party were successful:  a majority of the peiople had expressed their will that the policy and principles of that party should guide the administration of the government.  If then we are to have popular government, why did the cabinet ministers ignore the will of the people?  Our system of government is directly akin to the British system, and sooner or later our sovereign must recognize as did William of England the political axiom that cabinet ministers must be selected from the leaders of the dominant political party, and those ministers must also recognize the axiom that they must govern not at their whim and caprice, but as the trusted servants of the body poltic that gave them power and maintains them in it.

 

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HAWAIIAN TREATY.

Not likely to be accepted.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 22.—(Special)—The Clemens News Agency has received the following from its special correspondent in Hawaiian Islands, dated Honolulu, March 12:  A new commercial treaty between the United States and the Hawaiian government has been prepared, and a copy of the text has just been received here by the queen from the Hawaiian minister in Washington City.  On Monday the new treaty was read and submitted at a secret conference held at the palace by the queen and the cabinet ministers.  The new treaty calls for a cancellation for the present of the existing treaty between the two governments, and the substitution of a new document which permits of a full and free interchange of all the products, both natural and manufactured, of the two countries.  The new treaty virtually means free trade, absolutely, between the United States and Hawaii.

   It is not known as yet just what action will be taken by the queen and the government, but it is stated on the most reliable authority that the influence of the English friends of the queen, as well as the resident British diplomats, will prevent her from accepting the new treaty in its present form.

   The document is said to be the same which the Hawaiian minister to Washington City brought from that city to San Francisco during the visit of his late majesty to the Coast, and which was agreed upon at a meeting, held at the palace hotel, of the minister, the King and Camberlain McFarlane.  The treaty had previously been submitted and approved by both President Harrison and Secretary Blaine.

 

The Reason Why.

   “This know also that in the last days perilous times shall come.  For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetons, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affections, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce despicers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; and having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.”

   The incontinent, the unnatural affections; the boastful, proud, blasphemous, covetous, and generally loose morality of our community, tolerated and even encouraged by the parents, and worse than all by a sycophantic Press, has lead us to take to task the immorality and the low instincts of the young people, whose lust makes their conduct towards one another, and in their marital relations, below, in far too many cases, the instincts of a lower order of animals.  This condition of our society, is unwittingly or otherwise encouraged by the parade of nuptial ceremonies which the newspaper give, and more especially the “leading” newspapers of our city.  Such fulsome and unnecessary panoramic display of what should be private, is often heralded even to a minute description of the lady’s trousseau and gentleman’s underwear.  Such liberties must be very unpleasant to gentle people and a rude shock to a young lady of modesty, whose changed life causes her retirement for a period from society.

   As much as we have been inured to the grossness and incontinence, the vice and wickedness which holy writ holds up to mankind as a light and a warning to check man’s inordinate passions, which we see manifestly on the increase here, as well as throughout the world, we cannot help feeling it a duty to lend our feeble aid to purify the moral atmosphere which permeates our community; which threatens even the sanctity of our homes.

   We may be excused in bringing forward our protest by publishing a satire taken from an English sporting paper, intended no doubt for the same purpose, i.e., to mirror out the debasement of the marriage relation to that of brutish instincts instead of being an ordinance from God for a pure and divine purpose.

   Is there any need for calling a halt, and using such a remedy?  To a willful and perverse generation apply the lash says Solomon, and this advice is not for any pleasure that it gives to the parent but to save the child.  Amputation is often necessary to prevent mortification of the body, and thus extreme and seeming harsh means are necessary.  The same reasons apply to our condition.  Any remedy is almost excusable applied at the present time to save the community from the pollution and corruption that stalks unrebuked in our midst, yea, quietly allowed to pass by unnoticed by our public mentors – the Press and Pulpit.

   Why is it that our lynx-eyed newspaper editors are so willing to cater to the jaundiced tastes of our community, by an enumeration of the under apparel of a young lady is supposed to wear as a full blown woman; and forgets to mention the sequel to the many bright colored weddings, which they took such delight to expatiate on so minutely at the start?  To our knowledge, and to the knowledge of a large portion of our community, no less than five mesaliances have occurred where husbands have left their wives and wives their husbands, and their poor unfortunate children, two of which cases are in the courts of the Kingdom, yet scarely noticed by any of those public mentors, not even to draw a moral from the unfinished tale of which they were the first to wish the unfortunates God-speed.  Not a word about the sufferings of a forlorn wife and four children, whose husband with that “peculiar” lack of principles and affection, marries a Hawaiian lady, mortgage all her property, draw out from the savings bank, all that the young wife’s motherly feelings had gathered together for her children, and then leave the country; leaving his wife and children to the friendship of a community, whose charity, depends upon the sect to which one belongs.

   Nothing has been said about such brutish conduct, beside which the action of most of the lower order of animals stands in noble contrast.  The “leading” daily, the first to laud the pair without a word of admonition, now with a full knowledge of the results of this matrimonial alliance, has not a word of sympathy even to offer the unfortunte wife and helpless children.

   And it is by such “leading” writers of daily newspapers we are held up in holy horror, because we choose to reprint a wholesome bit of sarcasm which points a moral and adorn a tale; which every kind father and mother, husband and brother should accept and profit thereby.

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   Since the publication of our reprinted article, taken from an American sporting paper, satarizing the public parade, so much seen in the columns of our “leading” dailies of matrimonial alliance in high life, we have been interviewed by two worthy citizens, who were laboring under a misapprehension that the satire had a personal application to them or their families.  We disclaim having had any intention of wounding the susceptibilities of any one.  We do believe that the reportorial gush in which fashionable marriages are so generally paraded, is often demoralising by pandering to the vanity and animal instincts of our nature, rather than to modesty and its kindred virtues; hence we merely transferred into the LEO the satire which had done duty in the columns of a foreign paper.  We feel sure that the two gentlemen, who called upon us, will see the inapplicability to either of them or their families of the quoted article.  On the contrary we believe that the marriages of the two young gentlemen, were marriages of unadulterated affection, and not for the sake of lust or pelf.  There is a tinge of romance in either case that we rather admire, more especially as our marriages here have so little of the unalloyed affection necessary to bind the twain as one mid the trials and temptations of this unsatisfactory life.

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ON DIT.

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   That there is more straightforward sense in any one of the LEO’s English editorials, than in all the Johnstonian effusions of the self-styled “leading” foreign daily.

OLELO HOOLAHA.

   Ke hai ia aku nei ka lohe i na kanaka a pau, o kela ano, keia ano, ua kapu na ko’a HEE o Koaiki a me Kaaiapei loke o kai Oneuli, aole e holo ka waa me ke kanaka a o i ka Hee, o ka mea kue i keia olelo hoolaha, a loaa ia’u, e hoopii no au me ke kanawai o ka aina.

                                                          M. KALEOIKAIKA.

Waikane, Maraki 31, 1891.                                                       2ts-w

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H. P. K. Malulani.

   HE LOIO a he hookapeke olelo ma ke Kaanawai. E loaa no au mai ke kai hawanawana o Kawaihae, e hoene ana me ipo la, a Hamakua au i ka la’i o Kakaiau ma ke alo o na pali.  E ohiia no hoi na aie me ke ku i ka eleu a me ka puahiohio.                  Nov 8 ’90, d-ly.