The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1857-01-15
THE PACIFIC
Commercial Advertiser.
THURSDAY,

THURSDAY, JANUARY Is.
THE right of TRIAL BIZ Jury and the Act OF
HABEAs CoRPUs are justly esteemed to be the founda-
ton of the personal security of the subject and of the
permanent existence of every free government, and
are incorporated in its constitution or regulated by
its statutes. Any encroachment on the fullest free
dom of the former, or any suspension of the latter,
is an acknowledgement that the government is either
inefficient in itself and incapable of securing impair
tial justice to the subject, or unable to maintain its
authority constitutionally within its dominions.
Both are rights necessary alike to the security and
liberty of the subject and the very existence of the
State and neither can be abridged or annulled
without the subject or the State suffering thereby.
In the year 1874 or ), q new treaty was proposed
between England and this Kingdom, embodying,
among other stipulations, that no British subject
should be tried here for any crime except by a jury
proposed by the British Consul resident. This treaty
was ratified and went into force in 1916. The same
provisions were incorporated into the French treaty
ratified about the same time. Although the British
treaty of 1916 has been supplanted by another.
based on more liberal principles, it is maintained
that as long as the French treaty continues to have
any force, all its provisions, however arbitrary they
may be, can be claimed by every foreign Consul resi-
dent near the court of this Kingdom.
Without stopping here to inquire into the wisdom of
this government ceding away, in 1916, certain privi-
leges which it did not presume to demand from the
other parties to those instruments, or why it did not
claim for the Hawaiian the same privilege in case of
trial for crime in England or France, we will assume
that the concession was asked for on the part of the
European governments and granted by this, from
the impression that impartial justice had not then
become so fully established in the Hawaiian Kingdom
as not to demand for the foreigner some additional
safeguard, to which he might fall back in cases of
capital or grievous penal offenses. 1t was never in
tended, by either party to these treaties, to claim or
concede the Interpretation of the laws of the Hawaiian
Kingdom, or to declare that its laws should be of no
effect when applied to foreigners, even though, in
similar cases, these laws may have full force when
applied to subjects.
1t is o long time since any matter has arisen
in our community which threatens to disturb It's
peace and quiet so much as the subject of Dance
Houses, which came up in the Supreme Court last
week for trial on the question whether they are nui-
sances or not. In order that all our readers may
understand fully the question, we viii state fairly
the facts in the case. Some three or four years ago,
the proprietors of two of our public houses, in order
to make their establishments more frequented, insti-
tuted nightly dances of native women, dressed ex-
ceedingly lewd, which attracted crowds of seamen.
The Marshal, acting in cooperation with the District
Attorney, made complaint against the proprietors in
the police court, and the dances were adiudged to be
nuisanees, under the following section of the Penal
l. The oGeuse Of common nuisance is the endangering of the
maintaining or continuing what is offensive On annoying and
s sss5aE9 ca.o or pnaa ass nurtf ~ o the pubic, or Is a public Outrage
and directly to the corruption of the morals, honesty and good
cation by law.
These dances were then discontinued, or conducted
very privately, until three or four months since,
when they were revived at the Liberty Hall, National
and Globe Hotels. The proprietors assert that they
had taken every measure in their power to insure
deeorum and order at the dances, and it is certain
that they were less lewd exhibitions, so far as the
dress of the females was concerned, than those for
merly established. The attempt was again made
on the part of the government to suppress them,
and, on a charge of the dances being nuisances, a
WAS rendered, in the Police Court, against
the propretors, who are British and French subjects,
from which an appeal was made to the Supreme
Court, and the case was decided, as reported in
another column, IN favor of the proprietor of one of
the establishments The case, however, was not de-
cided by a legally chosen jury but, under the pro-
visions of a suspended treaty, a picked jury was en-
panneled, and the case submitted to it. 1t would
only have been a just tribute to the laws and the
judiciary of the Kingdom to have allowed them to
take their usual course, instead Of taking shelter
under the provisions of a superseded treaty, which,
though it may have been adapted to the state of
affairs here twenty years ago, Is a libel on the present
administration of justice In our courts We are in
formed that no resort would have been made to this
obsolete provision of picking juries, had it not been
by one Of the defendants, of the French
Consul, who is said to have declared that if it was In
power to sustain dance houses it should be done.
With the motives which led this consular jury to
the decision they brought In, We have nothing to do.
twelve men In Honolulu might have brought In
the same verdict, under the same circumstances.
We assume that their verdict. however informal,
establishes as a fact that for the time being dance
houses are legal and cannot be suppressed that the
government has over them no control that the law
Is q dead letter that the hands of the marshal and
judicial officers of the government are tied up and
the community of Honolulu must submit TO the
existence of dance houses. This is the result of the |
decision of the jury.
Were this Interpretation Of the law to be confined
merely to Honolulu. it would not matter so much : |
it involves, with it the entire kingdom In every
town and hamlet dance houses nav be established