A.—2.

1873 and 1884 advocated the annexation. I must add that there has been no time at which Her Majesty's Government have failed to secure the independence of these islands: reciprocal assurances to that effect were given by Her Majesty's Government and the German Government, and the islands Jrnve not, in fact, been seized by any foreign Power.

[Extract from the Times, Thursday, 7th March, 1889.] The Samoan Question. Berlin, 6th March. With reference to the recent statement that King Mataafa had promised to the German Consul in Samoa to suspend all hostilities until the Conference at Berlin had finished its labours, it is semiofficially explained that no report of negotiations on the subject has yet reached Berlin.

[Extract from the Times, Friday, Bth March, 1889.] Samoa. In answer to Mr. W. M'Arthur, Sir J. Fergusson said, —W Te have no information of the conclusion of a truce between the German Consul in Samoa and the chief Mataafa. We have heard that the ex-King Malietoa has been conveyed to the Marshall Islands. Pier Majesty's Government have never asked the German Government that Malietoa should be well treated while detained by them. We have no reason to doubt his fair treatment; but we have no special right to interfere on hisbehalf. We have heard indirectly that while in Germany he received very handsome entertainment.

[Extract from the Times, Monday, 11th March, 1889.] Recent German Doings in Samoa. Sir, — Yacht " Casco," Hawaiian Islands, 10th February. News from Polynesia is apt to come piecemeal, and thus fail of its effect, the first step being forgotten before the second comes to hand. For this reason I should like to be allowed to recapitulate a little of the past before I go on to illustrate the present extraordinary state of affairs in the Samoan Islands. It is quite true that this group was largely opened up by German enterprise, and that the port of Apia is much the creation of the Godeffroys. So far the German case extends ; no farther. Apia was governed till lately by a tripartite municipality, the American, English, and German Consuls, and one other representative of each of the three nations, making up the body. To both America and Germany a harbour had been ceded. England, I believe, had no harbour, but that her position was quite equal to that of her neighbours one fact eloquently displays : Malietoa—then King of Samoa, now a prisoner on the Marshall Islands—offered to accept the supremacy of England. Unhappily for himself, his offer was refused, Her Majesty's Government declaring, I am told, that they would prefer to see him independent. As he now wanders the territory of his island prison, under the guns of an Imperial war-ship, his independence (if it still exists) must be confined entirely to his bosom. Such was the former equal and pacific state of the three nations at Apia. It would be curious to tell at length by what steps of encroachment on the one side and weakness on the other the present reign of terror has been brought about; but my time before the mail departs is very short, your space is limited, and in such a history much must be only matter of conjecture. Briefly and roughly, then, there came a sudden change in the attitude of Germany. Another treaty was proposed to Malietoa and refused, the cause of the rebel Tamasese was invented or espoused, Malietoa was seized and deported, Tamasese installed, the tripartite municipality dissolved, the German Consul seated autocratically in its place, and the Hawaiian Embassy (sent by a Power of the same race to moderate among Samoans) dismissed with threats and insults. In the course of these events villages have been shelled, the German flag has been at least once substituted for the English, and the Stars and Stripes (only the other day) were burnt at Matafatatele. On the day of the chase after Malietoa the houses of both English and Americans were violently entered by the Germans. Since the dissolution of the municipality English and Americans have paid their taxes into the hands of their own Consuls, where they accumulate, and the German representative, unrecognised and unsupported, rules single in Apia. I have had through my hands a file of consular proclamations, the most singular reading—a state of war declared, all other authority but that of the German representative suspended, punishment (and the punishment of death in particular) liberally threatened. It is enough to make a man rub his eyes when he reads Colonel de Goetlogon's protest and the high-handed rejoinder posted alongside of it the next day by Dr. Knappe. Who is Dr. Knappe, thus to make peace and war, deal in life and death, and close with a buffet the mouth of English Consuls? By what process known to diplomacy has he risen from his one-sixth part of municipal authority to be the Bismarck of a Polynesian island ? And what spell has been cast on the Cabinets of Washington and St. James's that Mr. Blacklock should have been so long left unsupported, and that Colonel de Coetlogon must bow his head under a public buffet ? I have not said much of the Samoans. I despair, in so short a space, to interest English readers in their wrongs. With the mass of people at Home they will pass for some sort of cannibal islanders, with whom faith were superfluous, upon whom kindness might be partly' thrown away. And, indeed, I recognise with gladness that (except as regards the captivity of Malietoa) the Samoans have had throughout the honours of the game. Tamasese, the German 'puppet, has had everywhere the under hand; almost none, except those of his own clan, have ever supported his cause, and even these begin now to desert him. "This is no Samoan war," said one of them, as he transferred his followers and services to the new Malietoa, Mataafa; "this is a German war."

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