FIJI.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 147, 23 November 1874, Page 3

FIJI.

[Written especially for the Globe.] IV. The new Cabinet consister of Mr Woods, as Premier and Minister of Lands and Works ; Mr Thurston, Chief Secretary and Minister of Foreign Relations ; Dr Clarkson, Finance ; Mr Swanston, Native Affairs; and Captain Barrack, Trade and Commerce. A decided acquisition was made in Mr Swanston, incomparably the most capable man Fiji holds for dealing with the natives. _ A long residence in Samoa and Fiji has given him a thorough knowledge of the Polynesian mind, and his co-operation should, for some time to come, be indispensible to the ruling powers in Fiji. He has been replaced in this post by SirH. Robinson, and there is probably no appointment which will have given more general satisfaction. Many Fijian Ministers have been charged with displaying intolerable airs of pomposity towards the public—but none of this could ever have been laid to the score of Mr Swanston. He was also the only one who had hitherto had any administrative experience, having been the chief instrument in the establishment of the confederation of which Maafu was the head, styled the Tovata in Viti; Tui Thakau, the powerful northern chief, and Tui Mbua were the other members of this federal union, and though in the territories of these two last the laws of the Fijian kingdom were adopted, in Lau, that is the Windward Islands, where Maafu held sway, the settlers were content to see the laws of the former Tovata still nourishing, for the subjection of Maafu to the authorities at Levuka and Bau has always been merely nominal, and he took care fa* keep the taxes which were raised in Lau in his own pocket. It had been confidently expected that Mr Swanston, as member for Lau, would take a most prominent place on the Opposition side of the House ; and letters, wildly declaring that he had acted the part of a traitor, appeared in the newspapers, from the pens of those who had been disappointed in their expectations of Ins powerful aid. Of Dr Clarkson, the Minister of Finance, little need be said. He was looked upon by the public, whether justly or unjustly we do not pretend to say, as the puppet of his stronger-minded colleagues ; and the only time in which he managed to incur much personal unpopularity was during a tour of Viti Levu, which he was sent on with a few minor officials, in the small steamer Pride of Viti, to discover the amount of disaffection in the different districts round the coast. The forcible arrest of a settler on the Ba coast, and the firing at one similarly arrested, who jumped overboad and was swimming ashore, raised a storm of indignation among the European residents in all parts of Fiji. Dr Clarkson took no particular part in these proceedings, beyond acquiescence, and the Government officer who discharged his revolver at the man in the water, was Mr Henry Thurston, brother of the Chief Secretary, formerly a member of the Volunteer force in the North Island, then a major in the Fijian army, and who has just been appointed Stipendiary Magistrate for South Viti Levu and Kandavu. Captain Barrack had been an energetic Oppositionist, and his holding of office was almost nominal, being chiefly intended as a mark of confidence in the new state of things. He continued to reside at Savu Savu, in the north of Fiji, and seldom came to Levuka to take a part in the councils of the Cabinet, and it was announced that he

would hold ollije without; salary ; this, for each of the Minist.-rs, was fixed at £SOO a year, the highest salary being given to the Chief Justice, £750 ; which that acute old gentleman had, with a wtez distrust of Treasury notes, stipulated should always he paid at least half in coin. After a short amnion, in which it was amusing to hear Mr \VOOd3, as head of anew Ministry, throwing the blame for the unsatisfactory state of affairs on the previous one, as if he had had nothing to do with it, ho suddenly departed again for the Australian colonies, to negotiate a further loan of £50,000 which had been authorised by Parliament. Considerable amusement was for a short time created in Levuka by the antics of the Chief Justice, who was occasionally displaying a partiality for the bottle by no means creditable to one in his position. It is probably only in Fiji that such a scene could have been presented, as a Chief Justice missing for two days, and the head of the Ministry seeking him about the town, till he was found decidedly the worse for liquor in the small house of his native colleague, with a gin bottle on the table before him. Another day the town heard how his Honor the Chief Justice, toddling home the previous night with his trusty friend the Hawaiian consul, had tumbled on his nose into a muddy taro patch and been nearly suffocated ; and how, having been conveyed safely home, the venerable man had spent most of the night in a tipsy attempt to wash his clothes. As he was a new comer, and had as yet made neither friend 3 nor enemies, no particular notice beyond ridicule was attracted to these vagaries, which ceased with the arrival of his family from Sydney, which happened soon afterwards.