[Extracts from an editorial article in the
Spener Gazette of February 7, 1873.]
The immediate future of the Sandwich Islands has already been decided by
the election of the Prince Lunalilo, known to be a friend to the United
States, as king, by a plebiscite, the confirmation of which is as good
as certain. The annexation of the islands will be thus deferred, though
not made in the long run impossible, for they lie within the legitimate
sphere of the United States, and in the hands of that power would do
more for themselves and for the world than under their present rule. If
the passion for annexation in the direction south of the present
territory of the Union is but a bad inheritance of the slave oligarchy,
on the other hand the wish for the possession of the Sandwich Islands
has a deeper justification, for it will be for the benefit of all
civilized nations.
The American Union was the first to awaken the Eastern Pacific countries
out of their slumber, and with its ample resources to rouse them to
activity, commerce, and industry, in short to introduce a modern
development. California is already in regular steam communication with
Japan and China; the inhabitants of the celestial empire have taken up
the staff and are helping to people the United States. The Japanese are
seeking to establish even closer relations with America and Europe. The
Pacific Ocean enters into the history through the Americans; here is the
legitimate field of their enterprise and power. Their shipping, which,
in consequence of narrow laws and protective tariff measures, has been
swept from the Atlantic, seeks now the Pacific, where it has all but
exclusive empire. There the American mind works in the
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spirit of progress and of unshackled
freedom. The Sandwich Islands are the “halfway house” between America
and Asia. Hitherto this little kingdom of the Kanaks, with its 50,000
inhabitants, its constitutional apparatus of two chambers, its
responsible ministry, and it’s supreme court, has been but an
involuntary play-ball in the hands of English and American missionaries,
planters, and merchants. A play-ball will it remain, though now the
Americans have got the upperhand. Thus the inhabitants of the islands
offer no impediment; they need not even be as the American journals
desire, gently exterminated, since five deaths take place to every three
births, so that a hundred years ago, in Cook’s time, the population
amounted to 400,000 souls. Moreover, the islands yield excellent cotton
and sugar in abundance, and the harbor of Honolulu especially is the
natural station for the American whalers, who can there most
conveniently pass the summer.
The kingdom now established there is an artificial political creation,
which will go to pieces whenever its founders no longer find it to their
interest to maintain it. The Americans are now the most powerful of the
foreigners in numbers, influence, and property. They acquire, by the
election of Lunalilo, a still greater importance, and may quietly await
the course of events. But however things may result, however long they
may go on as they are, the annexation of the Sandwich Islands is a
well-founded political requirement, for it is based upon sound
principles and civilizing problems, the furtherance of which is also for
the interest of Europe, and the absence of which, in the cases of San
Domingo and of Cuba, makes the desire for their annexation nothing less
than Quixotic.
