The Liberal, Volume I, Number 41, 1 February 1893 — A LOST OPPORTUNITY. [ARTICLE]

A LOST OPPORTUNITY.

The late Queen and her advisers must be infatuated. How else shall we account for their perverseness in defying the laws of fate, and seeking to turn back the Car of Progress. It is too late in the 19th Century to rationally hope for the restoration of monarchical forms which have been overthrown by the people. If it be answered to this that the people are not in sympathy with the late overturn, and are even opposed to it- that a small minority of the people consisting almost entirely of a race alien to the soil has brought about the overthrow of the monarchy, - we rejoin that a monarchy which could not protect itself against a small minority of the people dpes not deserve to exist, much less to be regalvanized into life, and lifted from the slough into which it has fallen through its own inherent vices and incapacity. It would be travesty upon government to re-install in the place of power, those persons and institutions whose lack of merit and capacity has so lately been demonstrated. The Annexation Engine is under way, and opponents of the program will have to get off the track or be crushed. Monarchies are by no means the ideal form of government, and no people on earth are more impressed with the truth of this assertion than the Americans. Whatever may be claimed for the spirit of justice which animates the American government, (and we believe it to well deserve all the compliments paid it in that particular), the friends of the late regime may rest assured that the resuscitation of defunct monarchies is not the direction in which that spirit of justice either has been or will be manifested. That government can find a more profitable field for the exercise of its virtuous attributes than in exploiting monarchical graveyards. It therefore seems to us a willful waste of a golden opportunity, when the late Queen and her adherents expend their energy and - coin - in sending a mock embassy to Washington for the purpose of reversing the decrees of Fate. If such "embassadors" are accorded a hearing except at the Bar of the Capital lunch rooms, it will surprise the present writer. As drowning men will grasp at straws, so dying institutions will

catch at any manner of mad and useless expedients to prolong their hold upon life. It has been so proven in the case of our late monarchy. But how much more wise, prudent and admirable it would be in the adherents of the old system to recognize the hand writing on the wall, abandon an untenable and ridiculous position, and by accepting the inevitable, pave the road at once to peace and profit. The sovereigns of Hawaii have had uncommonly "soft snaps" at the public expense. The revenues from Crown Lands alone exceed the salary of the American President. Those revenues will never return to the wearer of a Crown, under these tropic skies. Has her late Majesty considered how comfortable it might be to enjoy those revenues, or a generous share of them, in her capacity, as a private citizen? Such might, we believe, be her good fortune, should she adopt a wise and prudent course toward the new administration, before it shall be too late. But we can scarcely, in the light of late experience, expect wisdom or prudence from that source. We fear the ex-Queen will show herself incapable of seizing the advantages presented by the situation and that she will so forever lose her golden opportunity.