The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1902-10-08
OLDEST LEGAL
CURIOSITIES
FROM FIRST VOL
UME OF HAWAIIAN LAWS READ
TO SUPREME COURT.

The fishery rights arguments in the
Supreme Court closed yesterday after
noon, with some quotations from some
of Hawaii's oldest legal curiosities.
The lawyers went back to the first vol
umes of Hawaiian laws ever publish
ed and f. NJ. Hatch read for the
courts benefit several sections which
contained anything but legal phrase
ology.
The following is one of the old-time
bits of Hawaiian law-making, of the
days of the third Kamehameha, which
was quoted by Hatch as showing the
bearing on the question of titles to
lands:
"Rehect WELL all we landlords of the
Kingdom, on all the regulations of this
law, lest you be dispossessed according
to the principles of the 18th section.
Search for your wealth on your own
labor day, search out such kinds of
business as will enrich the country,
and those tenants who live upon the
land under you, that the nigh and low
may be under the like subsection to the
same laws enacted by the chiefs for
the protection of the kingdom. On the
second year after the PRONUNCIATION of
this law, which is the year on which
full poll tax is paid, those landlords
who do not belong to the national
council shall pay to the king one tenth
of part of all the avails of their labor
days On the year which pays but a
half tax on the poll, the landlords shall
pay to the King one-fifth of their in
come, and this shall be a perpetual tax
of the kingdom on the landlords, hav-
ing an annual change in the proper
ton"
The eleventh section, to which refer
ence is made, contains the following:
Furthermore, ignorant persons shall
be no longer employed, neither as tax
officers nor as land agents, for that is
means of expressing the people and
making them poor, they being so ac-
customed to impose burdens at will
and receive the property of others
without pay. This is perhaps the rea-
son why the people at the present time
are so lazy and work so feebly.
"Ye landlords, to whom lands are
given in charge, no longer rule your
tenants in ignorance, lest the tax Off
GERS being enlightened in the princi-
pies of this book nullify your title as
landlord, and we give the lands to
those who are ready to aid the feeble
portions of the community. The ignor-
ant shall receive their proper reward,
poverty, and the lands shall be given
to other lords. This penalty, poverty,
shall be the reward both of chiefs and
people, if they act in reality contrary
to the above"
If the private fishing rights, should
be established by the present proceed
ings, they will probably remain as
they are indefinitely it is stated, in
stead of being condemned and taken
over by the Territorial government, as
allowed by the Organic Act. The Act
says that the Attorney General of the
Territory may" bring suits to con-
denim such rights as are established,
the value thereof to be paid out of any
funds not otherwise used, in the Ter
ritorial treasury. There is nothing
compelling the Territory to condemn
and pay for the rights, and it is likely
to be long time before there is money
to spare to pay for them. The Attor-
ney Generals Department will there
fore not press the matter beyond con-
testing the present suits.
| The Supreme Court was asked, both
by A. G. NJ. Robertson for the govern
ment and F. M. Hatch for the plain
tiffs, to go into the law of the whole
matter in its forthcoming decision, and
the cases were therefore argued on
general issues not touched in the argu-
ment before Humphreys, whose ruling
appealed from was granting a motion
! for a non-suit.