Hawaii Holomua, Volume III, Number 167, 23 February 1893 — Untitled [ARTICLE]

Yesterday was the anniversary of Washington’s birth day. lt is hardly necessary to state that he was known as the Father of his Country and has been traditionaIly handed down as incapable of telling a lie. Should it be possible for the shade of that great and good patriot to revisit the scenes of his immortal and successful struggles against what he considered foreign despotism and tyranny, and in favor of liberty and equal rights to all men what would be his feelings to find that the degenerate descendants of the men, he aided and led, in their struggles for liberty were engaged in endeavoring to fasten political chains on their unfortunate fellow citizens in a little group of Islands whose very powerlessness should have been their strongest defence against the grasping greed of these citizens of a republic, whose proudest boast is that it is the home of the free and the refuge of the oppressed. He who fought to free his own country from foreign domination would never have counselled, or agreed, to rivet chains of political and practical supremacy on the defenceless and weak inhabitants of another nation. Nay ! he would have spurned such a proposition with scorn, and driven the proposers of it from his presence with contumely and obloquy. WouId to God that the Spirit of Washington will animate his fellow countrymen in these days ! That Americans and the missionaries in Honolulu should wish to tender Captain Wiltse a reception previous to his departure, as a token of their appreciation of his share in the recent revolution is quite natural. That they should desire to give such reception a universal character by issuing invitations to partake in the entertainment broadcast, may indicate that a spirit of conciliation is beginning to come over them, and that they wish to make up with the nation whom they have so cruelly injured; or it may simply be an attempt to get as large a crowd as possible together, and use such fact to make political capital of. That anybody loyal to the cause of Hawaii can partake in the entertainment is beyond belief. The very act of Captain Wiltse. for which it is intended to honor and thank him, is the act against which Hawaii nei has solemnly protested to the United States, and at the present stage to forget that protest would be a disgrace to anyone who has the interests of this country, and this people at heart. No true man can be merry while the fate of his country is trembling in the balance. Let the foreigners, who treacheruosly have sold this land. drink and dance on the political ruins of Hawaii, but let every self-respecting citizen —be he white or brown —stay home to-morrow night and mourn. Whatever kind of a picture of the condition of people and affairs on these Islands can the Commissioners to Washington have presented to the Government there ? According to the outline of the proposed treaty as published in the United States newspapers, and republished in Tuesday’s “Advertiser,” we are not to have self-govemment, no privileges of citizenship are to be conferred in the treaty, and all

present or former contract-Iaborers are not to be considered as residents after annexation, and special provisions are to be made for Municipal as well as Territorial Government. In other words after annexation none but those being American citizens at the date of the annexation are to have any voice or vote in any kind of affairs, either municipal, territorial, or general, and even they will have no voice or choice as to what men they prefer as rulers or officials, and what particular form they would like the government to take. All those Germans, Norwegians, and Portuguese who came to these Islands originally as contract laborers will be treated as aliens in a strange land, without either the rights of citizens, or even those of residents of their own nationalities residing in the States. In other words, everyone, excepting American citizens, is to be completely disfranchised and debarred from participating in the Government of these Islands even to the extent which they have hitherto done under the monarchy, and American citizens are to be restrained of their full liberty of controlling the government of their country by the regulations, and restrictions to be made on municipal and territorial government. This is the reward the drei hundred and the Portuguese get, for their support in assisting to overturn the monarchy. No vote, no citizenship, no anything, but a little temporary employment at $2 and 3 square meals a day. Verily, the gratitude of the Reform leaders is something marvellous! But what a picture the Commissioners must have presented of our population and their capabilities and tendencies to secure such a result as this—the total disfranchisement of over 10,000 voters of all nationalities and the partial disfranchisement of about 600 more of their own nationality. Is this what they call government of the people, for the people, and by the people ? Is this the following out of that traditional policy of the United States which found its fullest expression in the passage of the 15th amendment to the Constitution ? What can they have said, or what can we have done, that will justify such an unholy and tyrannical outrage on those foundations of human liberty which the United States itself sprang into being to assert, uphold, and protect ? Had we been a horde of barbarous and bloodthirsty savages, a tribe of uneducated and uncivilized negroes, or undomesticated and migratory red Indians, or the abject and grovelling slaves of Russian or Turkish despotism, we could not be placed in a position of more despicable and tyrannical tutelage. Yes! we are free men and we have our rights. And who is there fit to be free, who knows his rights, but will dare maintain them ? It is now in order for our citizens of every race and nationality following their constitutional rights and privileges to meet together, in a peaceable and orderly manner, and distinctly and emphatically repudiate the right, and authority of the Commissioners to Washington to make any such proposals, or to agree to any such conditions, as the news received seems to indicate that they have done.

Let it not be supposed or understood for one moment that we counsel any opposition to the defacto government, or any contemptuous, seditious. or treasonable action towards them, or towards altering the present condition of affairs for we do not. We counsel and urge everything to be done peaceably and orderly, as the constitution directs, and as our rights give us the privilege to do. But everv man who has the least spark of manhood in him should protest firmly, but quietly, in public meeting assembled. that his just rights and full liberty of taking a share in the government shall not be taken away from him with his consent. It matters not whether we are monarchists, annexationists or republicans, this is a platform on which all can meet on terms of eqality. We must not lose any right in governing ourselves that we now possess. Government by the people does not retrograde even at the bidding of five Commissioners to Washington. And we, as citizens. must see that it does not, or forever after despise ourselves as fools and cowards, fit only to be slaves to tyrannical despotism. This country has been a Constitutional Government for over forty years, and the rights of selfgovernment have heen fully and freely exercised during that time; and, please God, we will transmit to our children those rights of participating in the government of our country which we have received. To judge from the newspaperclippings which the ‘“Advertiser” publishes daily the whole American press must be unanimously supporting the views and actions of our dearly beloved missionary party. To show that our affairs are also discussed in a different strain and that some papers have a pretty correct view of things and men here. we reprint to day an editorial from a Massachusets paper the writer of which must be either extremely well informed or divinely inspired. The following is from the Natick Citizen of February first: