But this is not to say that the natives were content.In a sense,indeed,their opposition was continuous.There will always be opposition in Samoa when taxes are imposed;and the deportation of Malietoa stuck in men's throats.Tuiatua Mataafa refused to act under the new government from the beginning,and Tamasese usurped his place and title.As early as February,I find him signing himself "Tuiaana TUIATUA Tamasese,"the first step on a dangerous path.Asi,like Mataafa,disclaimed his chiefship and declared himself a private person;but he was more rudely dealt with.
German sailors surrounded his house in the night,burst in,and dragged the women out of the mosquito nets -an offence against Samoan manners.No Asi was to be found;but at last they were shown his fishing-lights on the reef,rowed out,took him as he was,and carried him on board a man-of-war,where he was detained some while between-decks.At last,January 16th,after a farewell interview over the ship's side with his wife,he was discharged into a ketch,and along with two other chiefs,Maunga and Tuiletu-funga,deported to the Marshalls.The blow struck fear upon all sides.Le Mamea (a very able chief)was secretly among the malcontents.His family and followers murmured at his weakness;but he continued,throughout the duration of the government,to serve Brandeis with trembling.A circus coming to Apia,he seized at the pretext for escape,and asked leave to accept an engagement in the company."I will not allow you to make a monkey of yourself,"said Brandeis;and the phrase had a success throughout the islands,pungent expressions being so much admired by the natives that they cannot refrain from repeating them,even when they have been levelled at themselves.The assumption of the Atua NAME spread discontent in that province;many chiefs from thence were convicted of disaffection,and condemned to labour with their hands upon the roads -a great shock to the Samoan sense of the becoming,which was rendered the more sensible by the death of one of the number at his task.Mataafa was involved in the same trouble.His disaffected speech at a meeting of Atua chiefs was betrayed by the girls that made the kava,and the man of the future was called to Apia on safe-conduct,but,after an interview,suffered to return to his lair.The peculiarly tender treatment of Mataafa must be explained by his relationship to Tamasese.Laupepa was of Malietoa blood.The hereditary retainers of the Tupua would see him exiled even with some complacency.But Mataafa was Tupua himself;and Tupua men would probably have murmured,and would perhaps have mutinied,had he been harshly dealt with.
The native opposition,I say,was in a sense continuous.And it kept continuously growing.The sphere of Brandeis was limited to Mulinuu and the north central quarters of Upolu -practically what is shown upon the map opposite.There the taxes were expanded;in the out-districts,men paid their money and saw no return.Here the eye and hand of the dictator were ready to correct the scales of justice;in the out-districts,all things lay at the mercy of the native magistrates,and their oppressions increased with the course of time and the experience of impunity.In the spring of the year,a very intelligent observer had occasion to visit many places in the island of Savaii."Our lives are not worth living,"was the burthen of the popular complaint."We are groaning under the oppression of these men.We would rather die than continue to endure it."On his return to Apia,he made haste to communicate his impressions to Brandeis.Brandeis replied in an epigram:
"Where there has been anarchy in a country,there must be oppression for a time."But unfortunately the terms of the epigram may be reversed;and personal supervision would have been more in season than wit.The same observer who conveyed to him this warning thinks that,if Brandeis had himself visited the districts and inquired into complaints,the blow might yet have been averted and the government saved.At last,upon a certain unconstitutional act of Tamasese,the discontent took life and fire.The act was of his own conception;the dull dog was ambitious.Brandeis declares he would not be dissuaded;perhaps his adviser did not seriously try,perhaps did not dream that in that welter of contradictions,the Samoan constitution,any one point would be considered sacred.