The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1894-03-22
THURSDAY. MARCH %, 1884
ISLANDERS OF THE post

Hawaii, or has pressed indcienslble
points against the Reform cause and
its leaders with more obstinacy than
the New York E5sHDg Past The
moment it heard Of the annexation
movement it declared, in its ca
cafledya way, that the sugar men,
led by Claus Spreckels, had in
spired the new departure in the
hope Of getting the bounty, and it
held to that absurd idea until SprcCk
els himself came out for restoration.
1t did no good to inform the Pest
meanwhile that the sugar men, if
they wanted the bounty badly
enough to fight for it, would have
begun the battle when the political
signs were right in America, and
not after an election which had
been won by a party that was op-
posed to the bounty altogether.
Against the impregnable logic of
this rejoinder the Pest merely set
its logged bounty assertion, and
would be doing so yet, we think,
had it not been for the course taken
by the Sugar King himself.
Lately the Pests habit of calling
upon its prejudices for Hawaiian
facts, and depending on obstinate
iteration to give them standing, has
had two marked illustrations.
Speaking OF President Dole's reply
to the demands of the United States
Government p declared, in precise
terms and with the pretense' Of
having unlimited proof behind it,
that the document was not written
by Mr.. Dole at all but by Mr..
Thurston. As a matter of record
Mr.. Thurston was in the United
States when Mr.. Willis declared
the Hawaiian policy of the Amer
lean Government, and in the lack of
cable. communication knew nothing
Of the trouble here until the news
of the demand and the reply
reached him in the Corwin's budget
of dispatches. 1t was as i'm
possible for him to have writ
ten or suggested a line of Mr..
Dole's document as it would have
been if he had been living on an
other planet. Still words would
be wasted in trying to convince the
Post of these facts owing to its in
grained and unassailable faith in
the dogma that lie well stuck to
is as good as the truth.
We find in local Royalist paper
this quotation from the Pest and
shall assume that it is printed
correctly from the fact that it bears
the unmistakable Godkin ear
mark:
We are not called on to prove that
any missionary cheated or despoiled any
Hawaiian. We would not do so if we
could. On the facts now before the
world, the burden of proof is on the
missionaries After having been for
seventy years the pastors, teachers.
guides and guardians of a simple, ignor-
ant, mobile, newly-civilized race, the
property of the Islands is found to be
mainly in their possession, in that
of their sons, and other able,
industrious, and energetic white
men, with whom they act and
sympathize. At the same time we
find the missionaries, sons of mission
aries and their friends here at home in
the religious press, joining in the de-
nunciation of these same natives as
-adolatrous, ignorant, unchaste and I'M
fit for self-gOvernment. There is no
court of equity in the world which
would not. under these circumstances,
finding the missionaries laden with so
much property, compel them TO explain
how they came by it. When a guardian
is found gorged with the goods of his
ward he is not allowed to get off by
abusing the ward or showing how igno.
rant he is.
The Pest uses the term mission
airy" as implying an alien who does
religious work among the natives.
Many such missionaries used to be
here, but they did not make them
selves rich, though now and then
one was granted small tracts of
land by the Hawaiian chiefs as a
mark Of good will or in recognition
of some important service. These
old missionaries were earnest and
selt-sacrihcing-but they are long
since dead, and they left very few
successors in the ministry. Their
sons, as a rule, went into agri-
cultural, seafaring and mercantile
pursuits and, as Hawaii ceased
to be Protestant mission country
thirty years ago, few new mission
aries of that faith have come here
since. None of the class are pos
sessed of more of this worlds goods
than the average clergyman in the
interior of New York or Connect
cut. If the sons of missionaries
have done better financially in
trade than their fathers did on a
mission stipend, that is no argu-