VII.

MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.

THE politics of Tonga are a never-ending struggle between the faikava and the fono. In the intervals of the solemn ceremony of kava-drinking the most outrageous scandal is talked, the most startling lies invented,-for kava loosens the tongue-strings without muddling the senses. Were it less cheering and more inebriating it would be politically innocuous, for it is easier to govern a nation of drunkards than a people suffering from the diseased garrulity born of the pepper-root. Kava is drunk in every village in Tonga at least once a-day. Beside the doorpost in every house lie the flat and the round poundingstones whitened with the dusty fibres; and at each gathering, failing the moral character of an absent friend, politics, or church matters-which are so interlaced with politics that they are the more dangerous of the two-are the subject of conversation. To purify the air of the cloud of lies and miscomprehension that the faikavas have discharged into it, periodical fonos are necessary.

A fono is a compulsory meeting of the people to listen to the orders of some person in authority. Before Chris

tianity changed the face of the land the fono took the place of written law. The matabules, hereditary censors of public morals, summoned a fono to lecture the young chiefs whenever they had made a wider breach of the proprieties than their rank permitted. Nowadays its uses are various. In every village at six o'clock on Monday mornings there are fonos, at which the mayor reads out Government orders, and urges diligence on the defaulting taxpayers. There are Premier's fonos and king's fonos, the latter being very solemn functions, only adopted in cases of great national importance; but in all fonos alike no discussion is allowed, and the people are only summoned to hear what those set in authority choose to tell them.

The chief's orders of old were published abroad by the crier (fanongonongo), and this custom is revived whenever Government orders have to be proclaimed without the formality of a public meeting; but this time-honoured method is not often resorted to on account of the inaccuracy to which the human memory is subject. When Mr Baker promulgated his Wild Birds Protection Act, he instructed the criers to cry the preamble and a résumé of the Act-That whereas certain birds, particularly specified, were of public utility as the destroyers of worms, fleas, and other noxious insects, they were not to be killed on pain of heavy penalties. But the crier's version was: "Hear me, all people. It is the command of the Government-worms, fleas, and all creeping things are useful, so also are birds, therefore it is ordained that they shall not die; whosoever shall kill any bug, or flea, or worm, or bird, or other such thing, shall be grievously punished." It is right to say that the Tongans received the order.

A MEETING OF THE MAYORS.

87

without surprise, for the protection of insects seemed to them quite as reasonable as the protection of birds, or indeed as any other of Mr Baker's statutes.

On our return to Tongatabu we found the air surcharged with the gossip of the faikava. Two noblemen and the Government bandmaster, all disaffected for different reasons, had filled the islands with a story that ran as follows: "The Government was lying when it said that it was in want of money, for had not the Premier, when he opened the Treasury, found a bag containing a hundred thousand sovereigns, and hidden them for the use of the Cabinet Ministers ? Was he not deceiving the people when he told them to pay their taxes, or their country would be ruined?" "Mr Baker has gone to America, and has told the President what Britain has done, and he will come back in an American man-of-war to try the High Commissioner, and punish his enemies." "A British official is in Tonga to pay Tukuaho for betraying the country, and to arrange for annexation." It was plain that a fono must be held to cleanse the political atmosphere.

My colleague did not dare to summon the entire island to a fono without the express sanction of the king, so he determined to assemble the mayors from every village, knowing that they would carry an embroidered version of his speech to their constituents. Shortly after sunrise on the appointed day horsemen poured into the town, and tethered their horses outside the disused church at Pangai whither we were called to address them. As we entered the building at the pulpit end a policeman cried "Koe Palemia," and the mayors rose and saluted

with hands lifted above their heads. They were of every age-from the dressed-up monkey fresh from college, in black coat, trousers, and bare feet, proud in the possession of all human knowledge, to the grey-headed elder in the quiet dignity of the vala of native cloth. Tukuaho made a capital speech, denying emphatically the false reports that had been set about, and appealing to the patriotism of his hearers to get their taxes in and save their country from ruin. They must, he said, hold fonos, at which only those who were in arrears with their taxes should attend, and as each man completed his payments he should be relieved from further attendance. Then he called upon me for my maiden speech in Tongan, and I delivered myself of a string of platitudes about the independence of Tonga, and the desire of England to see her stand alone: that England did not want Tonga, having quite enough to do with the slice of the world she had already, to which Tonga was but a fly-blow on the map: that I had come at the king's request, not to meddle in their concerns, but to help them, and when they wanted help no longer I should go away. Then the spokesman fidgeted and asked leave to proffer a request. They were tired, he said, of talking to those who would not listen to them: would the Premier himself come and hold their fono? After some discussion it was settled that we should hold a fono in each of the

three great divisions of the island.

News now came from Vavau that Mr Watkin and Mr Baker's son and former private secretary had between them contrived to stir up a hornet's nest. The boy, with the secrecy of a conspirator, had been distributing leaflets and photographs of his celebrated father, and the minister

WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS.

89

of peace had been talking war. My informant, the Wesleyan missionary, showed me a letter from one of his native colleagues which left no doubt upon the point. Mr George Brown, the energetic and able head of the mission, would have liked Mr Watkin to be allowed rope enough to hang himself, but as that would have involved the starvation of the Government, already reduced to inanition, I decided to "belay." I was armed with a letter from the High Commissioner-to be given or withheld as I thought fit-warning him in plain terms that abstention from politics was required of him. The time for using this letter had now come. There being a special reason for an interview for the purpose of adjusting the outstanding accounts between the Government and the Free Church, I invited him to meet me at the public offices, and asked C to be present and take notes of the conversation. The reverend gentleman was rather restless throughout the interview, and seemed particularly uncomfortable at seeing an unobtrusive figure busily writing columns of figures at the other table. Experience of his absent colleague's methods of diplomacy had taught him where traps were to be suspected. I kept him in conversation for some minutes upon matters affecting the welfare of the Church, and then he seized his hat, and would have beaten a precipitate retreat had I not stopped him, and handed him the letter. As he read it his face became cadaverous, and his hand trembled so that he could not have understood the words. I told him that there was a particular reason for giving him the letter at this moment, since he was reported to have been using the language of disaffection at Vavau, and, before he