and derived from its profits a large increase of revenue as well as the means of consolidating his power. He died in 1819, and was succeeded by his son, Lilohilo, or Kamehameha II., a mild and well-disposed prince, but destitute of his father’s energy. One of the first acts of Kamehameha II. was, for vicious and selfish reasons, to abolish taboo and idolatry throughout the islands. Some disturbances were caused thereby, but the insurgents were defeated.
On the 31st of March 1820 missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions—two clergymen, two teachers, a physician, a farmer, and a printer, each with his wife—and three Hawaiians educated in the Cornwall (Connecticut) Foreign Missionary School, arrived from America and began their labours at Honolulu. A short time afterwards the British government presented a small schooner to the king, and this afforded an opportunity for the Rev. William Ellis, the well-known missionary, to visit Honolulu with a number of Christian natives from the Society Islands. Finding the language of the two groups nearly the same, Mr Ellis, who had spent several years in the southern islands, was able to assist the American missionaries in reducing the Hawaiian language to a written form. In 1825 the ten commandments were recognized by the king as the basis of a code of laws. In the years 1830–1845 the educational work of the American missionaries was so successful that hardly a native was unable to read and write. A law prohibiting drunkenness (1835) was followed in 1838 by a licence law and in 1839 by a law prohibiting the importation of spirits and taxing wines fifty cents a gallon; in 1840 another prohibitory law was enacted; but licence laws soon made the sale of liquor common. Missionary effort was particularly fruitful in Hilo, where Titus Coan (1801–1882), sent out in 1835 by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, worked in repeated revivals, induced most of his church members to give up tobacco even, and received prior to 1880 more than 12,000 members into a church which became self-supporting and sent missions to the Gilbert Islands and the Marquesas. In 1823 Keopuolani, the king’s mother, was baptized; and on a single Sunday in 1838 Coan baptized 1705 converts at Hilo. In 1864 the American Board withdrew its control of evangelical work.
In 1824 the king and queen of the Hawaiian Islands paid a visit to England, and both died there of measles. His successor, Kamehameha III. ruled from 1825 to 1854. In 1839 Kamehameha III. signed a Bill of Rights and in 1840 he promulgated the first constitution of the realm; in 1842 a code of laws was proclaimed; by 1848 the feudal system of land tenure was completely abolished; the first legislature met in 1845 and full suffrage was granted in 1852, but in 1864 suffrage was restricted. Progress was at times interrupted by the conduct of the officers of foreign powers. On one occasion (July 1839) French officers abrogated the laws (particularly against the importation of liquor), dictated treaties, extorted $20,000 and by force of arms procured privileges for Roman Catholic[1] priests in the country; and at another time (February 1843) a British officer, Captain Paulet of the “Carysfort,” went so far as to take possession of Oahu and establish a commission for its government. The act of the British officer was disavowed by his superiors as soon as known.
These incidents led to a representation on the part of the native sovereign to the governments of Great Britain, France and the United States, and the independence of the islands (recognized by the United States in 1842) was recognized in 1844 by France and Great Britain. In 1844 John Ricord, an American lawyer, became the first minister of foreign affairs. A new constitution came into effect in 1852. It was the aim of Kamehameha III. and his advisers to combine the native and the foreign elements under one government; to make the king the sovereign not of one race or class, but of all; and to extend equal and impartial laws over all inhabitants of the country. Kamehameha IV. and his queen, Emma, ruled from 1855 to 1863 and were succeeded by his brother, Kamehameha V., who died in 1872, and in whose reign a third (and a reactionary) constitution went into effect in 1864, by mere royal proclamation. Lunalilo, a grandson of Kamehameha I., was king for two years, and in 1874, backed by American influence, Kalakaua was elected his successor, in preference to Queen Emma, a member of the Anglican Church and the candidate of the pro-British party. Kalakaua considered residents of European or American descent as alien invaders, and he aimed to restore largely the ancient system of personal government, under which he should have control of the public treasury. On the 2nd of July 1878, and again on the 14th of August 1880, he dismissed a ministry without assigning any reason, after it had been triumphantly sustained by a test vote of the legislature. On the latter occasion he appointed C. C. Moreno, who had come to Honolulu in the interest of a Chinese steamship company, as Premier and minister of foreign affairs. This called forth the protest of the representatives of Great Britain, France and the United States, and aroused such opposition on the part of both the foreigners and the better class of natives that the king was obliged, after four days of popular excitement, to remove the obnoxious minister. During the king’s absence on a tour round the world in 1881, his sister, Mrs Lydia Dominis (b. 1838), also styled Liliuokalani, acted as regent. After his return the contest was renewed between the so-called National party, which favoured absolution, and the Reform party, which sought to establish parliamentary government. The king took an active part in the elections, and used his patronage to the utmost to influence legislation. For three successive sessions a majority of the legislature was composed of office-holders, dependent on the favour of the executive. Among the measures urged by the king and opposed by the Reform party were the project of a ten-million dollar loan, chiefly for military purposes; the removal of the prohibition of the sale of alcoholic liquor to Hawaiians, which was carried in 1882; the licensing of the sale of opium; the chartering of a lottery company; the licensing of kahunas, or medicine men, &c. Systematic efforts were made to turn the constitutional question into a race issue, and the party cry was raised of “Hawaii for Hawaiians.” Adroit politicians flattered the king’s vanity, defended his follies and taught him how to violate the spirit of the constitution while keeping the letter of the law. From 1882 till 1887 his prime minister was Walter Murray Gibson (1823–1888), a singular and romantic genius, a visionary adventurer and a shrewd politician, who had been imprisoned by the Dutch government in Batavia in 1852 on a charge of inciting insurrection in Sumatra, and had arrived at Honolulu in 1861 with the intention of leading a Mormon colony to the East Indies. To exalt his royal dignity, which was lowered, he thought, by his being only an elected king, Kalakaua caused himself to be crowned with imposing ceremonies on the ninth anniversary of his election (Feb. 12, 1883).
Kalakaua was now no longer satisfied with being merely king of Hawaii, but aspired to what was termed the “Primacy of the Pacific.” Accordingly Mr Gibson addressed a protest to the great powers, deprecating any further annexation of the islands of the Pacific Ocean, and claiming for Hawaii the exclusive right “to assist them in improving their political and social condition.” In pursuance of this policy, two commissioners were sent to the Gilbert Islands in 1883 to prepare the way for a Hawaiian protectorate. On the 23rd of December 1886 Mr J. E. Bush was commissioned as minister plenipotentiary to the king of Samoa, the king of Tonga and the other independent chiefs of Polynesia. He arrived in Samoa on the 3rd of January 1887, and remained there six months, during which time he concluded a treaty of alliance with Malietoa, which was ratified by his government. The “Explorer,” a steamer of 170 tons, which had been employed in the copra trade, was purchased for $20,000, and refitted as a man-of-war, to form the “nest-egg” of the future Hawaiian navy. She was renamed the “Kaimiloa,” and was despatched to Samoa on the 17th of May 1887
- ↑ The first Roman Catholic priests came in 1827 and were banished in 1831, but returned in 1837. An edict of toleration in 1839 shortly preceded the visit of the “Artemise.”
