THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1270, 13 April 1878, Page 3

THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.

A travelling correspondent of the Melbourne “Age,” in the course of an interesting article on the South Seas, writes : Hawaii is just now extremely prosperous, but there are breakers ahead. The planters are getting high prices for their produce, which is allow to enter duty free into the ports of the L T nited States, under the provisions of the Reciprocity Treaty, But there are grave doubts whether it will remain in operation very long. Great Britain, France, and Germany assert that they already possess treaties with the Hawaiian kingdom under the provisions of wnich their subjects are guaranteed all the privileges granted to those of “ the most favored nation,” The representatives of the European Powers insist that if American subjects can enter goods at Hawaiian ports free of duty, those belonging to Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans should be allowed to do the same, and the non-American merchants of Honolulu are only paying duties upon their jmport? under protest. The Hawaiian Government contends that the words “ most favored nation ” only applied to the state of things which existed at the time the treaties containing those words were signed, and were not intended to fetter subsequent action. An ambassador has been sent to Europe to impress this view of the case upon tho-various European Powers, but no information is yet to hand as to whether his mission has or has not been successful. Honolulu is very well off for clergymen. The little town has an Anglican and a Catholic bishop, besjdes hosts of inferior clergy. But they do not seem able to counteract the low tone of morals induced by the soft, enervating, and delicious climate. The Hawaiians may be the most orthodox people under the sun, but I am afraid the less said about their social ethics the better. The Supreme Court was to hold its sittings a few days after my visit, and there were about forty applications for divorce—pretty good for a community with a population of 50,000 —and some of the applications were based upon incompatibility of temper. It is difficult to speculate about the future of the Hawaiian Islands. The United States would oppose their annexation by any European nation, and as Uncle Sam does not appear anxious to extend his own dominion beyond the sea, the probability is that the Hawaiian Kingdom will remain independent long after the original inhabitants have disaj p'ared, and that they will be succeeded by a uiised race of white and half-caste landowners, planters, and merchants, dominating over a horde of Chinese laborers. A great deal of nonsense is written and spoken about the future of the Pacific, hut a glance at the map and at a geographical gazetteer would dispel a great many of the illusions in which the gentlemen who take part in the discussions at the Royal Colonial Institute delight to indulge. Fiji is now a British colony, but its annexation has not answered the expectations either of the Government or of the settlers. Now Caledonia and its dependencies are French, the Sandwich and Friendly Islands are under independent and efficient native rule. Circumstances will probably compel the annexation by Great Britain of Samoa, as the only means by which the outlaws and beachcombers who infest it can be kept in order, but I am sure that it will never pay the expenses of Government so long as tl o native race exists. The colonisation of Australia has been a splendid success, because the aborigines were so few and so insignificant that it was not necessary to recognise their title to the land which they inhabited. But a tropical island, in which the soil is owned by a race of people who have to be bought out, in which the climate is so warm that Europeans cannot labor out of doors, and in which it is necessary to cultivate the land by coolies from India or Chins, is very likely to prove a costly acquisition. New Guinea may perhaps prove to be an exception, but the majority of the South Sea Islands would prove white elephants to any nation which undertakes to govern them and at the same time recognises the native title to the soil. And besides, the resources, area, and population of all the islands put together, with the exception, of course, of New Guinea, are scarcely worth taking into congideratjon.