The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1871-11-04
Another Critic on Hawaii.

would seem as though there was something in
our climate,-the air that surrounds our sunny
isles,-that impels about everybody who visits
US and who has an ordinary : : talent for COM
position, to proceed to enlighten the world with
a book or a series of otherwise printed sketches
of us poor islanders and our surroundings. Of
course where SO much is written from so many
different stand-points of observation, We come in
for a large share of misrepresentation and some
times of abuse.
About four years ago, a stranger arrived here
from California, and during a stay of a few
months became somewhat known as a speculative
purchaser of the rather unpoetical article of
molasses, for shipment, in which business report
says he was shrewd enough to " corner to his
own profit, some thousands of dollars. In one
respect at least, resembling a countryman of his
who once occupied a high official position here,
having made ga good thing" financially during
his stay, he proceeds, on his return to his native
land, to write his Hawaiian Experiences
These are in the form of serial letters published
in recent numbers of the Boston Commercial
Bulletin, under the nom de plume of ga Cape
Horner." In these letters he is sufficiently per-
sonal, abusing by name some of our citizens, and
praising others, and, aside from some futile
straining after wit, is creditably keen at OBJ
serving and noting down his observations. He
appears to have scrutinized the various aspects of
the Reciprocity Treaty scheme, and tells us
what some perhaps did not know before-that it
was owing to a private pique of Mr.. Harris that
pulu was excluded from the schedule of island
products proposed to be admitted free. He ap-
pears to have imbibed a thorough disgust for the
whaling business and whalemen, and grossly
libels the latter. But taken as a whole, the let
tiers are quite chatty and readable, despite their
generally depreciating tone.
In the Christian Union, Henry Ward Beecher's
Journal, of the 18th of last September, we find
the same gentleman descanting on sSectarianism
in Hawaii, and to this, the least truthful and
just of his productions, he afixes his name
Julius A. Palmer, Jr. He commences his
structures on our Sc sectarianism - by acknowl-
edging that ga great work has been accom-
plished a nation is redeemed from paganism
a community is under a system of laws akin to
those of all Christendom - and then insinuates
a gross libel, to the effect that liberty of con-
science and freedom of form in religious matters
is not granted to all! What more ridiculous
than the following sentence:
The absurd devotion Of the American element of Hawaii to
a barbarian language can be explained on no other ground than
that, by it,, a virtual barrier is maintained against the entrance
of the various denominations of protesting Christians.
Such trash is hardly worth attempting to an
swer, were it not that it will be believed abroad.
That the American missionaries did not, when
they arrived here fifty years ago, begin at once
the task of educating the nation in the English
language, may, by some shallow thinkers, be
deemed to have been an error. That they, or
any one else, have ever opposed or even failed to
promote every feasible attempt to cultivate that
language among the people, is utterly false, and
Mr.. Palmer must have known it to be 80 when
he penned that sentence. He quotes the Hon.
Mr.. Phillips, the Attorney General, as authority
to prove that the Hawaiian language is " one of
the most incomplete and impotent dialects the
world has ever known" Doubtless to Mr..
Phillips, who does not pretend to understand a
single word of Hawaiian, it is a most "impotent
dialect as would be any other language with
which he had not either the faculty or the appii-
cation to become acquainted. We are further
told that Z" the ordinary verb to be- in its
various forms, is not found in the Hawaiian, SO
that the most common expressions must be ar
rived at in a very clumsy manner The mode
of expressing the verb " to be-" SO far from be-
ing clumsy, when used by an intelligent and
educated native, is capable of ~affording the most
minute and varied shades of meaning. Prof.
Alexander, who is an authority, and who e-
presses an opinion as to the qualities of the Ian
guage adverse to that attributed to MIR. Phillips,
says in his Grammar, p. %:
ain European languages, when the predicate is a noun or
adjective, it is connected TO the subject by the cOpula or verb
Ito be-" In Hawaiian. this verb is expressed by the arrange
particles, which are also used with verbs"
Nothing is easier, or more common than to de-
preciate a language, of the construction and
peculiarities of which one has no knowledge.
few who have made a thorough study of the
Hawaiian, find that it has many and unexpected
beauties.
A good portion of the letter before us is taken
with a plea for the s' mission" of the Eng
lish Church at these islands. which the writer
seems to have been particularly attracted to,
(although he goes out of his way to declare him
self g by birth and profession a New England
Congregationalist,' y and which he asserts was
&c bitterly opposed by the Americans Where
is his proof for this assertion, as well as for an
other, to the effect that in a recent missionary
work, the English Church of Hawaii is reckoned
among the heather influences which the mission
aries are called upon to controvert?"
Mr.. Palmer takes particular pains to let his
readers know that he associated in the highest
circles, and rather indelicately, we think, repro
duces what was perhaps casually said there in his
presence.
On the whole, we must class this new writer
on Hawaiian affairs with many who have pre-
coded him, as misrepresenting and defaming US,
either willfully or stupidity.