Home: The Annexation Of Hawaii: A Collection Of Document
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HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 693 knowledge - displayed himself in public matters in a very gross way personally - particularly in connection with Hula dances. Q. You mean going to see Hula dances? A. No; but in cheering and publicly commending the vilest portions of it before the people present. Licentiousness is a common practice in a country where most of the women are weak, but he carried it to an excess of grossness. He has run through his property, so that he has hardly anything left- Q. And the next man? A. The fourth man, Peterson, is of very old family - a native of the island, J believe. He was one of our promising lads, but when he came back here from the United States he fell into association with the lottery and opium rings, and he lost character and lost ground. Q. On that account? A. On that account mainly. I do not know of any individual transactions of his. I never heard of any that indicated dishonesty, but he was associated with them in their proceedings and he was supposed to have dealings with them in opium smuggling. I do not know what the facts are about that. He was intimately associated with them, especially with Paul Neumann, who was the reputed chief of that company and has been for a long time. Paul Neumann was for many years the chief adviser of the King. He was a back stair adviser - a private counsellor of King Kalakaua in all his arbitrary proceedings toward the establishment of arbitrary power. It is unpleasant for me to speak evil of men. I said before, the culminating act was one which took the public by surprise. It was the drawing up of the household troops in line in front of the palace, which I personally witnessed, and the attempt to promulgate an entirely new constitution by arbitrary means. Q. What do you mean by attempt to promulgate a constitution by unlawful means? A. I mean that she presented such a constitution to her ministers and they demurred. She used violent language toward them. They fled, and after several hours of contest with them she finally yielded so far as to give an announcement to the natives that she would not promulgate it to her intense regret. She added it was her intention to " promulgate that constitution in a short time. She gave the people hopes that she would do it. That act of the Queen put her in a position which practically wrecked her Government; that is, no further confidence or reliance could in any way be placed in her or her administration from that time on. It was felt by the whole intelligent community to have gone to pieces. There was an absolute necessity for substituting some other government in its place. I became informed of an element in the Queen's proceedings which awakened an apprehension in my mind of some fanatical excitement. I heard that she was under the influence of Kahunas; that she had been for two weeks in consultation with Kahunas before her endeavor to submit the constitution, and that on that very day she was conducting sacrificial worship. Q. How did you get that? A. I do not remember how the information came to me now. There was a good deal of excitement about the idolatrous doings in the palace. I was going on to say that my alarm was excited, that I handed in a note to Mr. Stevens on Sunday expressing my sense of the probable need of protection from the American forces for fear of some kind of a fanatical uprising among the natives. I never heard from Mr. Stevens on the subject. I do not know what he thought of it or what influence it had upon him. I was only speaking of my own apprehensions. I