Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 308, 23 October 1891 — Our Consistency. [ARTICLE]

Our Consistency.

We hear that a dispatch has been sent on to meet the new Minister or Envoy to Waehington, Dr. Mott Smith, by a bearer. which left in the Steamer Alameda yesterday noon. The rumōr states that the purport of the mission is to make a new treaty, giving away Pearl Harbor to the Uuited States, and to insert the obnoxious "troop clause" allowing the Hawaiian Government the right to make use of United States forces for the mainpenance in power of those in authority. As we have always held, this is nothing more or less than an attempt to barter away the right of every individual man, woman, and child in his country, without having a voice in doing so. To this style of governing the people of Hawaii. we enter our protest in be<illegible> of the Hawaiians proper, who have shown their disapproval of any such underhanded work some three years ago in one of the most popular and unanimous public

meeting ever held in this country. The course which we advocate now is consistent with the position we took then and since, in regard to this more than annexation. Annexation to America pure and sim ple gives tho people of this country all the glorious privileges and protection of that great and free country. But annexation by cession of territory, piece at a time, and by being policed with foreign troops, eubject to the beck and control of an unscrupulous ministry, backed by a handful of moneyed men, is what our free sprit was born never to admit as just an worthy of a freemen. We hope the champion government and protector of man's freedom' and rights will not be led to do anything to sully her honor, in the case of Hawaii, who wiil naturally hecome a part of her at no distant day, without being a party to such system of chicanery, never before allowed in the administration of her affairs or in the history of her intercourse with other nations.

This is an age of deceptions, of treachery, and of greed and selfishness. Every phase of our individual and national existence is tinged with that which is superficial. There is very little that is genuine, and very littlē that is just and true. And as we have said at the heading of our article, our consistency is in maintaining an opposition to such a degraded state in either the individual or the Government.