Polynesian., 1862-05-17
Ghe polnnesim.
Thoughts the System OF Legislation

on the possible remedies for these evis-5y DR.. JOHN
RAE, of Hama, Maui. author of New PR1Sc1PLEs OF
PoLTICAL ECONOMY, &C., &C., SC. GCoRtinIea
HAMA, MAUI, April 3, 1862.
SR:-l was interrupted when writing the let
ters you were kind enough to insert in your
columns, during the spring Of 1861 by fit of sick
ness. have since postponed the conclusion Of
my remarks in hopes to find leisure to condense
my remaining thoughts into the smallest possible
compass, until now that the near approach OF the
sitting of the Legislature warns me that if they
to appear at all must put them down, leisure or
no leisure, as they present themselves to me.
1t seems to me that l ought to recommenee with
q short resume of the argument, as it appears to
me to stand.
There are certain melancholy facts which must,
| think, be apparent to all who have lived for
years, as have done, amidst the Hawaiian race,
as they exist in the country parts of these islands
The first of these is the almost total disregard
among them of the sanctity of an oath, and the
consequent incapacity of the laws to reach crimes
and misdemeanors, and to enforce justice between
man and man.
| The second the astonishing extent to which sex
ual immortality prevails among them.
The third the wide and fatal spread of those ter
rble diseases which follow in the train of that i'm
morality
From these three sources of evil overspreading
|
mating the life blood and enfeeblng the vital
ergies of this people, all who like myself. have
opportunities of looking at them they really are,
see them dwinding away before our eyes. and can
| fix period when, unless some stop be put to their
downward course, they must disappear from the
| face of day.
This, therefore, is no time for dallying this is
no time for pareyng delicately, for fear of hurting
the feelings of this body of men or that body of
men. 1t becomes every friend of the race to come
to some decision, to adopt and urge some course
Of action, and that right speedily.
The patient is sick-deady sick. Are there any
hores that by change of treatment we may re-
store him to health and strength, Or is his re-
eOvery to be desPairOd of, and ought We to bound
our efforts to such a course of treatment as may
best sOothe his passage to the tomb!
The conclusion at which we on this point arrive
must OF course be based on our Judgment of the
treatment to which he has hitherto been subject
ed. Has it, or has it not been judcious!
The first question, in short, is this Has the
melancholy decadence among the Hawaiian people
in those elements that mainly give power to a
| tiOn, or win respect for it, been owing to some
| perversity in the race or is it wholly partly
owing to an injudicious course of legislation If
the former suppositiOn be correct there is hope.
| We must let them go-depart in peace. If the
latter, then, though seemingly desperate their con-
ditiOn, yet we ought not to give them up, but may
still have hope that, by adopting more judicious
course of action and carrying it out with prOmptI
tude and decision, fresh life may be infused and
an improved social condition induced among them.
The papers which you, sir, have published, have
gone to show that In my opinion, it is mainly to
| the latter of these causes, viz. To injudiciOus
legislative action that the melancholy state of af
fairs we witness is to be traced. Ii this cOnclu-
sion be borne out by facts, it follows as conse-
quence that it is to remedial action in the
| laws that we are to look for remedy, and that
we need not despair of finding one, or Of its pro-
wing effectual.
But here we are met by difficulty which shall
shortly state. How, it may be said, these
things be! How is it possible that course of
legislation can have been entered ON having 50 in
furious tendency or if it had been unhappily en-
tered on how is 1t possible that it could have been
persevered in! Has not the Government always
had the aid of intelligent, and comparatively at
| least, enlightened men to guide its councils And
have not the people of late years had the advan-
! tage of House of Assembly, freely chosen by
themselves, out from among themselves, men whose
bOunden duty it was to watch over their we'll
! beingl
1t must be admitted that the objection seems for
midable, and that the co-exstence of u state of
things such here exists along with free Con-
stituton and intelligent advisers of the Crown, is
phenomenon probably without parallel in the
whole history of humanity. In all countries faulty
| legislation occasionally occurs, but In all free
countries, when glaring faults discovered, they
are rectified. How is it then that course Of ac
tion injurious has not only been entered on, but
perseyered in and that every attempt to rectfy it
has been met by clamorous opposition? In my
last letter said had Il hypothesis to PROFOUND
| that might explain phenomenon SO strange and
so lamentabe. proceed to state it:
1t is impossible to conceive that the men at the
| head of affairs in these islands could ever have
looked at these affairs with the eyes as other
| To- hoe al
cred the condition to which they were bringing
| them. To believe this were monstrous it were a
| libel on human nature itself. They must have had
set of optics deranging their vision. My by
pOthesis therefore is this
All those who, for the last forty years. have been
the real legislators of this people, have somehow or
other been furnished with set of high-powered
calyinistic spectacles, and have never permitted
themselves to lay them aside.
A glance at the main characteristics OF that sect
will show that this my hypothesis sufficiently ex-
plains how the disastrous condition Of affairs
we contemplate was brought about
OF all the creeds of Christian sects the Calvlns-
tic, as laid down by its founder as propounded IN
It's standards OF faith, butt more especially as rea
soned out, with consummate metaphysical skill,
In the writings of Jonathan Edwards, has perhaps
most claim to be consistent system. All its parts
are complete, and fit in, each to each. 1t is emf
nently teTes atgue rotundus. But again, while to
all that walk within that narrow round, light
shines on their path without it, ali to them is
dim and dark-a confused mass of sin, misery and
eternal death.
| From this essential narrowness of vision, it is,
perhaps of all religious systems, the least quail
fed to take large, generous and comprehensive
views of the great mass of humanity lying without
it's pale. Hence its ncapacity at all to apprehend
and still less to sympathize, with the rude virtues
of semi-barbarous tribes. Hence, In its dealings
with them, two terrible errors.
Believing itself gifted with fund of infallible
truth, it is rash to seize on, and to deal with,
things, which it neither apprehends nor compre-
hends. And again, obstinate in its persuasion,
that, resting infalibe truth, all its dongs must
have been just and right, no adverse events can