Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 407, 10 March 1892 — Page 4

KA LEO O KA LAHUI.

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

 

 

 

K A    L E O .

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John  E.  Bush.

 

Luna  Hooponopono  a  me  Puuku.

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Thursday, March 10, 1892.

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“Be Just and Fear Not.”

 

          We love and admire the noble sentiment embraced in the above sentence, and have often wished to see it more faithfully carried out by our contemporary, who flies it as its motto.  It is a good one to follow and as we ha@ it by heart, we are over inspired by @ ennobling influence to do right without fear or favor and without being partial.

          Under its influence, we publish a letter sent to us from Kahuku, more particularly at the present time, when we find the executors and their administrators of the law are convalescing, after their Rip-van-Winkle repose and deadly lethargy in the exercise of their just rights and duties for the suppression of vice and evil and for the preservation of law and good morals in our community.  We love to see this change in the executors and administrators of the law and we hope that their zeal will lead them to “be just and fear not” and not to make use of their powers to persecute instead of to prosecute.  The following letter speaks volumes and is only an illustration of how law and justice is dealt out to suit in this country ever since its sudden transition from the summary and impartial justice of feudal days in Hawaii to that of a seventy years experience under the benign and pharis@ic influence that makes fish of @ and flesh of another under the same law.

          Kahuku, March 7 ^th , 1892.  Mr. Editor: -- We of this place would like you to publish this letter in your fearless paper.  We want to inquire if the Sunday law is made only for the kanaka and the Chinese?   When they do the least little thing they are pounced upon and made to pay the full penalty for the most trivial and insignificant trespass of the law.  The other day a policeman was complained to by people, who were annoyed at the systematic and willful transgression of the Sunday law by the Kahuku Plantation.  The Manager had been working the plantation labor for three  weeks without any regard of the law, laying railway tracks, cutting cane, and boiling sugar, using man and beast contrary to the law of the land and against the order of nature or the moral code.

          The policeman, who made the complaint to the Manager and asked him in a respectful manner to stop working on Sunday as forbidden by law, were quietly told that it did not make any difference whether they worked on that or any other day.  So the policemen, who knew the influence of the sugar owners and their money, over the law and over justice, went away satisfied that they would  be discharged if they stirred the matter any further.

          This is allowed all over this country, and the law is defied and justice denied.  The executors and administrators of the law are afraid to do what is right and just and the common people, over whom the law is made to fall with full force, is asked, “Well, what are you going to do about it?”  Well, we think there is only one reply.  Let us annex ourselves to some government who will give us equal rights, and make law and justice respected.           LAIE

          We sympathise with Laie, our correspondent, but can give very little hope, as the present government,  i. e., the executive and judicial, do not fly the motto: “Be just and fear Not!”  We fear that the god of unrighteousness has fastened its tentacles upon the officers of government and that the numerous suckers attached to each arm of the government has too solid a pull to allow “justice and fear not” to be exercised under the circumstances.

          Mr. Gay was pulled up before court and fined under a misapprehension of the law for misdemeanor, one hundred dollars, (he was not one of the suckers to the arm of our government calamary, but was an opponent of one).  The plantation he alludes to belong to a number of these peculiar attachments that is part of the arm of a calamary, and when they all draw together, the pull is heavier than justice and thus the strain bears unequally.  There is only one remedy, that we know, and that is, to spear the animal before he gets too much under cover of its own dark and filthy excresence, or as Laie says, annex the beast to Uncle Sam’s Menagerie where it would be properly regulated and displayed to advantage.

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THE  MORNING  KNIFER.

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          This lively publication is run for all it is worth in the interest of the missionary family clique.  It is a curious compound of religious bigotry, combined with the well known missionary desire for “ oo@ .”   So great is its desire for shekels, that if a poor unfortunate trader doesn’t see his way to advertise his wares in its columns, said unsuspecting trader i@  liable to be knifed in its pages without a moment’s warning.  Attached to the Morning Windbag are the two WEEKLY KULEANA MORTGAGE RECORDS, the one printed in English, the other in native.  They call  for no special mention as they are simply a reprint of the Windbag plus a lot of notice of foreclosure of mortgage.

 

From the To@  Time.

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THE  NECESSITY  OF  AGITATION

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          Under every republican form of government, institutions, customs and laws rest upon and are upheld by public opinions.  If that opinion be right, the institutions, customs and laws are right and just; if it be wrong, they are unjust.  It is of little consequence that laws are just, if there is no public sentiment to uphold them.  Nor is it of very great consequence that they are unjust, if lacking this same support.  Public opinion is supreme.  The proper channel of its expression is, of course, the law of the land; popular sentiment alone is not sufficient.  But the law rests upon the sentiment, and not the sentiment upon the law.  It is obvious therefore, that when abuser are to be corrected, public dangers averted, or reforms inaugurated, the work must begin by touching public opinion.  It cannot be done by simply touching and altering the law.  If popular sentiment is not what it should be, it must be molded into proper form.  This means education; and education is but another name for agitation.

          We could, doubtless, better understand and appreciate this were we living in those stirring times which preceded our Civil War, when agitation was the order of the day, -- when we might perhaps have listened to some of those great spirits who well understood its value as an educator of the public mind.  They have, fortunately, left their testimony behind them.  Of these, there was none greater than that peerless American orator, Wendell Phillips.  In the long and fierce agitation upon the question of slavery, he was first and foremost.  He made agitation his business.  He believed firmly in the supreme potency of ideas, working upon the minds of an intelligent, thinking people.  Better than most of the men of his day and ours, he seems to have realized that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”  His testimony upon this point is worth repeating.  Would that it might ring forever in the ears of the sleepy sentinels to whose guardianship is intrusted the liberties which are ours today.  Would that they were household words throughout the length and breadth of the land.  The words are taken from one of his public speeches.  He said: --

          “Each man here, in fact, holds his property and his life dependent on the constant presence of an agitation like this of anti-slavery.  Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.  The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day, or it is rotten.  The living sap of to-day outgrows the dead rind of yesterday.  The hand intrusted with power becomes either from human depravity or

esprit de @, the necessary enemy of the people.  Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by uninterrupted agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle and not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity. 

          “Some men suppose that in order to the people’s governing themselves, it is only necessary, as Fisher Ames said, that the ‘rights of man be printed, and that every citizen receive a copy;’ as the Epicureans two thousand years ago imagined God a being who arranged this marvelous  machinery, set it going, and then sunk to sleep.  Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated.  The anti-slavery agitation is an important, – nay an essential part of the machinery of the state. It is not a disease nor a medicine.  No; it is a normal state – the normal state of the nation.  Never, to our latest posterity, can we afford to do without prophets like @arrison to stir up the monotony of wealth and re-awaken the people to the great ideas that are constantly fading out of our minds – to trouble the waters, that there may be wealth in their flow.”              

          Ever since that agitation was drowned in the blood of civil war, the “great ideas” which pertain to individual liberty have been fading out of men’s minds, and the mantle of Philips seems to have fallen upon no successor.  But his words are as true to-day as when they were first uttered.  We cannot place dependence upon existing laws, or upon any future legal enactments, as bulwarks around our liberties, while agitation ceases to stir the popular mind upon the subject.  Liberty stands secure only when it has reared about it a bulwark of enlightened public sentiment.

 

L.  A.  T.

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ON  DIT.

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          That whaling Captains and men-of-war men help to keep things lively in these dull times.

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          That street crossings are required on Fort Street at the point where the short road leads to the O. S. S. Co.’s wharf; also at junction of Fort and Queen Streets.

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          That righteous Abraham thinks that the two Sam’s are:

“Two souls with but a single thought

“Two hearts that beat as one.”

And that they are beating him.

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        That the Road Board while professing to do right, forgets that the first duty it owes is to the source of its authority, and in accordance with the line of party principles.

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        That two of the juniors from the Survey Department, armed with staff and level, were seen one day last week on the Explanade, and the shellbacks frequenting the city front have been wondering ever since what is going to happen.

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        That the legislature is required to free the wharves at the landing places on the other islands.  A great deal of petty tyranny is exercised by plantation managers towards their employees and outsiders, as regards the freight landed at so called plantation landings.

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        That the “man on the street” asks why the subject of a reciprocity treaty between this country and Canada, New Zealand or any of the Australian Colonies has never been fully considered and talked about by our Chamber of Commerce or Cabinet.

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        That in the present slack time, it should be the duty or the pleasure of the local Chamber of Commerce to meet occasionally and talk over the present situation and devise ways and means for increasing the prosperity of the country.

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        That the Bulletin’s readers are hoping that the editor will stop padding his paper with those state clippings from Eastern Exchanges and start in again with his “Diversified Industries” series of articles; the latter were of interest to the community, the former nauseating from their utter balderdash.

          That W. H. Cummins, Road Supervisor, and Abr. F@rnander, member of the Board, had the courage of conviction to appear before their colleagues of the Liberal Party to clear up certain misunderstandings which the party labored under @ Dwight and S. Mahelona@ were conspicuous by their absence.  Those of the Road Service that appeared were exonerated.  @

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MONOPOL@

 

          5.  We shall use our efforts to obtain laws by which all favoritism in the government and all monopolies, trusts and @vileges to special classes shall be rendered impossible, by full, definite and mandatory matters.

 

PROTECTION TO HOME INDUSTRIES

 

          7.  We are in favor of encouraging all home agriculture and industries, all our native products, like rice, coffee, wool, tobacco, etc. should be protected and fostered by proper tariff regulation; and also it must be the duty of the Government, in its contracts and other operations, to give preference to national products over imported ones.

 

LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT

 

          8.  We desire a more liberal policy towards the different Islands of the Kingdom, outside of Oahu; they should receive a fairer proportion of the public moneys for the development of their resources and the satisfaction of their wants.  In fact, the principle of local, Self-government should be extended, whereby giving localities may choose the most important of their local executive officers, and levy taxes for the purpose local improvements of a public nature.

 

PUBLIC  SERVANTS.

 

          6.  Better laws should regulate the Civil Service.  The principle of the election of officers of the government by the people should be established, and no man should be allowed to hold more than one office of profit, whilst salaries should be adequate compensation for the services rendered.  All excessive salaries should be reduced and all sine @ures or superfluous officers abolished.

 

PROTECTION TO THE LABOURING CLASSES

 

          9.  We shall endorse all measure tending to improve the condition of the working classes, and consequently, without injuring any vested rights, we will advocate laws to prevent all further importation or employment of contract labor of any kind; upon conditions which will bring it into a ruinous and degrading competition with free Hawaiian or white labor.  We shall also, in the interest of the better protection of the poor, ask for more liberal exemption of their property from forced sale on execution, and from seizure in bankruptcy proceeding.

 

SMALL FARMING AND HOMESTEADS.

 

          10.  The wealthy fraction of our population have hitherto prevented the development of an independent class of citizens; the public lands have been acquired and have been tied up in a few hands or parceled to suit favorites, and small farmers and planters have been driven out by corporations or combinations of capitalists; but as small farming is conducive to the stability of the State, it should be encouraged by a new and more liberal Homestead act, by which the ownership of small tracts of land and the settlement thereon of families of our present population, -- and especially of the native Hawaiians who have been left almost homeless in there country – should be rendered possible.  To that end, the Government and Crown lands, (in so far as can be done without invading vested rights) should be devoted as soon as possible to homesteads, and conferred upon bona-fide settlers free of taxes for a limited period.

          It should be the further arm of government to, at once, no@ far-improve the means of transportation, -- local, national and international, -- as to provide, in all the districts, cheap means of conveying the product of the soil to market.

 

ELECTORAL RI@.

 

          11.  We hold that upright and honest manhood, and not the possession of wealth, arbitrarily fixed, should @ the right to vote for nobles as well as representatives, and no more power should be accorded to the ballot of the rich man than to the ballot of the poor man.  The discrimination in favor of wealth now made in our Constitution is contrary to all the eternal principles of right and justice and must be abolished.  To this end, we will favor a leveling of the present distinction of wealth and classes which blemish our laws with respect of the right to vote for nobles, thereby restoring to the native Hawaiians privileges which pertain to them in their own country, and of which they have been unjustly deprived.

 

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS

 

          12.  We favor the expenditure of @ [rest of paragraph too dark to decipher].

 

 

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