Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 265, 25 August 1891 — Page 4

KA LEO O KA LAHUI.

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

 

KA LEO. John E. Bush. Luna Hooponopono a me Puuku.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1891.

 

Discontent.

III.

            The Premier, when he assumed office was full of promise to the national party to respect their policy as the predominant political party, but he has ignored his promises, neglected his office, spent his time in carnal pleasures, and now finally announces that he does not care for the Hawaiians and will not give them any show for office; he openly deserts the National Party and cynically declares that he relies on the peon driver H. P. Baldwin and the sugar ring for his support. The rest of the cabinet, faithful only to themselves and their own little cliques, ignore all parties, all legislation, are devoid of any policy except that of daily dishonoring their promises, and have accomplished nothing beyond drawing their monthly salaries while important matters of state go by default.

            With the exception of the removal of one notorious political reprobate, and the placing in position of a few of the Queen's particular pets, there have been none of the political changes demanded by the party: Insolence and incompetence still have their sway in every department and on every island.

 

            The Custom House and Police Department are notoriously rotten with corrupt opium smuggling officials, but the government winks its eye and some of the cabinet are said to be on terms of intimacy with the well-known leaders of the opium ring.

 

            The Tax Assessors and Collectors, who have necessarily a great intercourse with the people, and who ought to be chosen among sympathetic men, are without one exception creatures or friends of the old Reform and sugar-missionary party.

 

            Moreover, in all branches of the government, the fact of belonging to the National and popular party has been a reason for being ousted of situations or for not being appointed. Thus, not only the changes desired by the people have not been made, but young Hawaiians with family have without just cause been wrongfully dismissed from office to make room for foreigners, and as the native Hawaiian justly notices it — all new appointments are boldly made unto aliens, foreigners who do not even take the oath of allegiance; more than that the Premier has been heard to remark that he would not give any office to a Hawaiian or half-caste as long as he remained in power, so that already several promising young Hawaiians have been obliged to emigrate to try and find in foreign countries what is refused to them in their own land, and many others will follow ere long, driven to exile by the present cause of discontent. In fact the cabinet have played the devil with the civil service and rendered it a reproach rather than an honor to serve the government.

 

            On the land question the government has gone utterly adverse to the policy of the National Party; large tracts of land are repeatedly put up for sale or lease in such conditions and sizes the they can be obtained only be the rich planter, and if it is not purposely done, it looks much like it. Moreover, homestead settlers and small farm industries are not encouraged, and no attention is given to many indispensable public improvements.

 

            Thus far it has been seen that the causes of discontent, the seed of which was sown in 1887, have been fostered by the hot-bed of blunders and the ungainly attitude of the Queen and of her cabinet; now, their sliding into the arms of the party which the people, natives and foreign working-men consider as inimical to her interests only adds fuel to the fire. But it must also be added that the attitude of the sugar barons has had its share of producing alarm and discontent. Struggling hard to regain their monstrous dividends, which have been seriously impaired by the "McKinley Bill," they threaten to attack the minor industries, and even to annihilate the rice production for their selfish benefit, and intend to displace skilled labor with trained peons, so that the dividends may be swollen by means of savings on well earned salaries; they would have the country owned by a handful of rich planters—millionaries ready to spend their money abroad and populated with asiatic slaves; and to that effect they are ever on the look out for grabbing government or Crown Lands, which the cabinet are ready to let them have at nominal upset prices. Thus, in every one of the moves of the planter faction, the rights of the natives, small farmers and mechanics are disregarded by them; and since the moment that they have been boasting of having captured the Queen's sympathies and aid by their sumptuous luaus, a fact that the Queen herself does also acknowledge, the masses are alarmed and find new and urgent causes of discontent.

 

IV.

            These are some of the principal grievances that have given rise to the feeling of discontent so prevalent among the masses, and many others will make the subject of further elucidation. Therefore, discontent is rife in every district and it is aggravated by the fact than twice the people had been fooled by a cabinet and made to feel that their constitutional franchise was a delusion and a fraud, and that when they as a sovereign people sent representatives to the Legislature with a well defined policy of government, the Crown and the Cabinet could successfully pose as imperialists and utterly ignore, the sovereign rights of the people, and repudiate their policy and their legislation. The principles of the National Party which represented the natives and the working classes in 1890 are the same now and will be the same in 1892 with some radical additions. The constitution must be amended to level the franchise and give the people a rule of liberty and equality. The Civil Service must be purified and placed on an honorable basis; the working classes and the smaller industries be protected against the selfishness and rapacity of the sugar magnates; the present unjust system of Taxation must be rendered so far as to make every man really pay in proportion of what he owns; and administration of justice must be obtained, less subject to sectarian spirit or partizan influence.

            The cabinet must be selected from and represent the predominant party, and while we do not expect to produce a Gladstone, Bismark, Blaine, we do except our minister to posses at least some degree of statemanship, business capacity, honor and intelligent conception of the duties of government. This cannot be said of the present or last cabinet, and until these results are obtained the feeling of discontent will remain and grow stronger until the voice of the people is heard and obeyed.

            So Mr. "U. S. S. Charleston," while we and our daughters will be pleased to see you and your gallant officers, we deny your right of interference in any of our domestic affairs, except it be in the camp of cupid. There is no need for your presence here, for there is no intention to imitate the example of the missionary revolutionists of '87 with display of arms and bloody threats. But reforms the people will have in a lawful manner; and if you wish to observe, a peaceful and dignified illustration of one of the grand principles of constitutional, popular government, come again next February, when you will see the native Hawaiians and the working classes marching in solemn procession to the ballot boxes in every district of the group, and depositing an overwhelming majority of votes for their chosen leaders, with a determination to secure a cabinet selected from their leader and pledged to represent them and their policy, and to administer the government in their interests: Loyal to the crown while it maintains its dignity, and bows to the will of the people; but determined to have a "government of the people, for the people and by the people," even if the apex of such a form should require radical modification.

 

NO FACTION.

 

            The LEO's success prevents the Bulletin from enjoying any more pleasant dreams of political "dolce farniente", and kills its presumptuous ambition of being the leader of public opinion in this town; therefore, its equanimity is disturbed to such an extent, that it laboriously pants out and painfully brings forth another long wined clumsy editorial of "good coin and bad English," the authorship of which we shall not trouble to enquire into, although parts of it bear the candian beaver's ear-mark, others suggest the kangaroo's ungainly swing, and others again point to a hyphen-ized Yankee. The LEO does not certainly enjoy the advantage of such and editorial "menagerie" at its disposal. But, whatever the LEO may be, one thing is certain and sure, that every one of its issues is anxiously looked for an eagerly read by every class of the public, friends and foes, who unanimously proclaim it the only readable sheet in the kingdom on political matters; and surely, the LEO's utterances in one day make more impression on the public mind, than the Bulletin's twaddle in a year, such stuff espcially as contained in the editorial of the 22d serving only as a help to sink the Bulletin in a deeper mire of public disdain.

 

            The Bulletin for want of good reasons to spread its spite on, slides into the most amusing inaccuracies, and evidently intends to use the celebrated recommendation attributed to Voltaire, "lie and lie again, something of it will always stick and survive." Its policy, the only one it is capable of, is evidently to misrepresent the actual standing of the National Party, so as to foster the division and split it would gloat to see occur; "where you cannot command, divide!" of course, it is no use giving any answer to the Queen Street rag, for "deaf indeed are those who will not hear!" but, for the benefit of its misled readers, a few words may not be amiss.

 

            The Bulletin is kind enough to concede that the National Party of 1890 "has reason to be proud of its platform"; thanks, old boy! but it knowingly utters a falsehood when it says that the "principles embodied in that platform have been wonderfully recognised" in the succeeding legislature. We say that the "principles of the national platform have been "wonderfully" and shamefully ignored, and disdained to such an extent that our platform of 1890 stands intact to this day, nothing of its wishes having been realised, except perhaps in transferring the government patronage from the Advertiser to the Bulletin, (hence this last's satisfied appreciation,) and every plank of that platform has to be fought over again, in view of obtaining a better realisation of it, in the next legislature. The consequence of this is, that the platform of the National Party of 1892 will be substantially the same, with the exception that the opposition and "wonderful" disdain manifested against it by the Bulletin's friends and supporters, will oblige the platform of 1982 to be more explicit and stringent, and therefore somewhat more radical.

 

            So much for the platform. Now about the men who intend to support it. The Bulletin rather begrudgingly admits, by inference, that the men of the National Party had in view a goal worth of national honor and national good: the Bulletin further says that the "adhererents of a party who stick to it through thick and thin .... must be credited with a high civic virtue" .... many thanks again, for that is just what the true adherents of the National Party as represented by KA LEO have done. They stood in the past by their platform, they intend to continue to "stick to it through thick and thin" and will not be satisfied with any half-way recognition; and they are unanimous about it, for there is to day, in the National Party, no "faction,"—"noisy" or otherwise, "parading itself as the party" or "arrogating to itself the dictatorship of it."

            Never before let it be said to the confusion of the Bulletin's crowd, never has the party been so united, so compact, so solid, so strong, as the near future will prove; and there is no "gangrenous limb" to "amputate," outside of the Bulletin's "malcontents," because the party now embraces only the staunch men of principles, and these men comprise,—not as the Bulletin with wilful falsehood asserts, only "two or three legislators who have been tried and found wanting in practical ability to serve the public,"—but all and every one of the members of last legislature who having been tried, have been found honest and faithful to the promises and to the principles of the party; The others, the black-sheep of the Bulletin's genus, the luke-warm members who never endorsed the platform but in faint praise or were ready to sell their vote for a consideration, have been discarded; they are not wanted, because the party does not intend to nurse any more traitors or allow them to again deceive the people under the disguise of those noble national colors they secretly disowned or only temporarily acknowledged to serve personal purposes and aggrandisement. But all men of good will, of patriotic purposes and political honesty, are welcome into the ranks of the National Party.

 

            No, there is no "faction" in the national party, outside of the mean coterie represented by the Bulletin and nobody knows it better than that paper and its friends, who are justly ignored and deservedly snubbed. Inde Irae! and that is why the Bulletin would fain make the public believe in a division, a want of unanimity in the National ranks. It has probably received some palpable inducement from the enemies of our party, to foment discord and bring about division, if it can! But the Bulletin will fail in it dirty mission, for the Bulletin has no influence on the public, by whom its despicable tendencies are too well known; the sheet who never lost an occasion to cast slurs and sneers on our workingmen and their association, the mechanics' union; the paper who despises so profoundly the poor native Hawaiian, as shown in its late appreciation on "Hawaii for the Hawaiians," finally the organ who does not blush to proclaim, by its motto, "pledged to neither sect nor party," that it cannot form any trustworthy alliance with anyone, and who proves it by ever living on the fence, waiting for the highest bid. That very moderate excuse for a newspaper has no right to speak in the name of the National party, no right to give it advice, and no right to pose as its "orb" to reflect and guide the public opinion. Mr. Bulletin, you had better go back to make,—as is your won't,—grand editorials with scissors and paste and give the patient public news from everywhere, from pole to equator, and on every thing under the sun, except on Hawaiian politics, with which you are incapable of dealing, on account of your narrow mind and dwarfed views.

 

            By the way, did it ever occur to that nebulous something which stands substitute for an editorial mind in the Bulletin sanctum, that there is a plentiful lack of wit and consistency in that alleged journal's devoting so much of its valuable (?) space to an attempt to mitigate the influence of KA LEO, which it solemnly declares to be non-existence. Go to, crazy old rag,—go to.

 

            That the Band gave a musical ovation in the absence of a popular one, to our young Pitt, as he came to the steamer Kaala last Friday; the same musical decoction was given to her Majesty as she embarked for Waianae.