IX.
A School of Cookery for Accountants.

Mutual confidence has so far decayed in this cynical age that the financial powers of statesmen are usually limited to the disbursement of the money voted to them by the Legislature, while even this limited authority is subjected to the rigid scrutiny of an uncompromising auditor. But Mr Baker saw the ignoble suspicion that such a system implied. He said to King George, "Trust me not at all, or all in all," and thenceforth voted his own supplies, kept his own Treasury, and was his own auditor,—a combination of offices that reflects equal credit upon the intellect that devised it and the high-minded confidence of the people who suffered it to be.

But what public character escapes the self-debasing slings of calumny? There were many who dared to throw doubts upon this arrangement, and to ask how the Honourable and Reverend Shirley Waldemar Baker so far transcended his fellow-men as to be exempted from the audit to which other Ministries are subject. It showed a mean and grovelling spirit; but the hydra-headed body called the public is composed for the most part of mean page 119and grovelling spirits, who pay their taxes without enthusiasm, and persist in regarding their rulers as men of like passions with themselves. So wise a man as the ex-Premier was not ignorant of the fact that public confidence was worth maintaining, even by pandering to the lower wants of his constituents, and he gave them the independent audit they sighed for. He selected as auditors a doctor, since deceased, an ease-loving soul, who chose life in Tonga because it was far from the irksome conventionalities of an effete civilisation, and the manager of the German firm—both unconnected with his detractors, and above the suspicion of partiality for himself. On the appointed day the books, and as many of the receipts as could be found, were laid before the two auditors, who added up the totals, and ticked off the receipts against the corresponding entries in the ledger. Then they asked for more receipts, and the Premier's office was ransacked without complete success for documents that had been mislaid. The audit dinner followed—a very sumptuous repast, if the viands bore any analogy to the winemerchant's bill,—the audit certificate was signed, and, forthwith printed and published to the censorious world.

The auditors conceived that their business began and ended with the books. If the money spent was all accounted for, it was not their affair to ask the Premier whence he derived authority for building a railway, for whom a cargo of strong liquors was intended, or why his club subscription should be paid from public funds. They were called in as accountants to audit certain books, not to ask irrelevant questions. They had perforce to accept the statement of the books as to the amount of revenue, page 120because Mr Baker said they were correct, and there was no means of checking a calculation that was arrived at by the ingenious yet simple method of counting the balance of coin in the safe at the end of the year, and adding it to the expenditure. This, by the way, is the best of all methods for ascertaining one's income, because the sum must come out right. Once a-year the Premier published a financial statement, but with this the auditors had nothing to do, and one must reluctantly confess that it was received by the world with cold suspicion.

I have already related that the fallen statesman was very anxious to take away some of his account-books. Not long after my arrival in Tonga he had written officially to demand them, and to challenge the right of an auditor to examine accounts which (he was pleased to say) had received the approval of Parliament; adding that if any adverse criticisms were made upon his financial transactions, he would demand an independent audit of his own. He was indeed so hyper-sensitive upon the subject of this threatened audit, that we felt a pardonable anxiety to lose no time in setting to work.

One glance at the disorder of the books and papers sufficed to convince me that I could not hope to make a complete audit for months to come, and I therefore wrote to the High Commissioner to ask him for the services of an accountant from the Colonial Government of Fiji. The return steamer brought Mr Forth, the present Auditor of that colony. He was allowed a fortnight only in which to attack his difficult task, and, considering the confusion and deficient information with which he had to contend, he made remarkable progress. page 121Some time was lost in attempting to begin at the date of Mr Baker's dismissal and work backwards; but with the discovery that many of the vouchers were missing, and that there was no means of ascertaining the exact amount of revenue, we abandoned hope of making a complete audit of the past year, and contented ourselves with a scrutiny of the payments we knew to have been made. But before examining the books for which an audit certificate had been published, I applied to Herr T—, the only surviving auditor, for permission to publish a criticism of these accounts, a request to which he very kindly acceded.

The financial system is worth describing. There was a head-treasury at Nukualofa, and sub-treasuries at Haapai, Vavau, and the two Muas. The native revenue-collectors were required to pay in their weekly receipts to the subtreasurer, who kept with intermittent exactitude elaborate books ruled in columns for every conceivable head of receipt. When sufficient time had been allowed for accumulation the Premier made a descent upon the subtreasuries, and carried off the money to Nukualofa, amid the murmurs of the men of Haapai and Vavau, who thought that the money should be spent in their own island. When the bags of silver reached the head-treasury, Tubo, the chief clerk, patiently counted it over, entered it in his books as revenue from Haapai or Vavau, as the case might be, and put it into his safe for the liquidation of "Treasury Orders." These "Treasury Orders" were a financial triumph of which any Chancellor of the Exchequer might be proud. When salaries or accounts became due the "Paymaster" drew a cheque upon the Treasury, page 122which, when countersigned by Mr Baker as Auditor-Greneral, became virtually a floating paper currency until redeemed by presentation at the head-treasury. Let us trace the career of one of these "Treasury Orders" now before me. It was drawn on January 7, 1889, in favour of Sekonaia Tuuhetoka for 27 dollars, probably a quarter's rent of one of the leases in Haapai, since it is indorsed "Department of Leases." It bears Mr Baker's signature lithographed, besides Sateki's name as Minisita Peimasita (Minister Paymaster), and S. E. W. Baker's as clerk to the Premier. Tuuhetoka has long ago forestalled this money at the nearest store, and he hands over the "Treasury Order" towards the reduction of his score, in the hope that it may so far soften the heart of the merchant as to procure fresh credit for him. In March the storekeeper buys a cartload of copra from a native, and tenders Tuuhetoka's "Treasury Order" in payment; and a week later the man hands it to the tax clerk in settlement of his poll-tax, now two years in arrear. It is written in the law that the sub-treasurers shall not cash "Treasury Orders," but it is nowhere forbidden to receive them as revenue. So the clerk gives him a receipt in full for his taxes, and the revenue-books show the country to be 27 dollars richer for the worthless paper which has never been debited as expenditure. Then the Premier's descent upon the sub-treasury is made, and the "Treasury Order" finishes its mendacious career in the wastepaper-basket in Nukualofa. Sometimes a "Treasury Order." eight years old, was presented for payment, grimy and frayed from wandering from hand to hand in some distant island, but the finances were conducted on too large a scale to be disturbed by such trifles. page 123The salary or rent due for 1881 was paid in 1889, and no one but the auditors—who were not expected to worry about such minutiæ—could be one whit the worse.

The "Treasury Orders" served their purpose, however. Printed in Tongan, and countersigned by Sateki, they kept the natives from asking inconvenient questions, and left the Premier free to indulge his overmastering appetite for spending money. The Customs duties and rents were paid by Europeans in cheques upon Australian and New Zealand banks, and these, being beyond the ken of Tongans, were handed over to Mr Baker to be paid into an account in the Union Bank in Auckland, ot which he had the absolute control. To clothe this position with a sort of authority, he kept two sets of books,—the one labelled Agent-General, and the other Auditor-General,—hoping probably to suggest the inference that the Auditor kept a suspicious check upon the Agent. But the Auditor-General seems to have been an easy-going, pliant sort of official, who hated to make himself disagreeable, and eontented himself with keeping his books on a plan of his own, which—so great was the sympathy that existed between the two officers—proved to de identical with that adopted by his methodical colleague.

So poor old Goschen was responsible, and upon his grey head would the blow fall if Parliament ever demanded a reckoning. There was a pathos about Goschen's position in the matter. Eesponsible for public moneys, solemnly required by the Constitution to submit a financial report to Parliament accounting for the last penny, liable to impeachment and other unknown terrors if he were found wanting, he sat placidly upon the hidden mine, agitated only by anxiety as to whether the cravings of his physical nature would be satisfied. But who would have thought of blaming Goschen? He himself had severer views as to his responsibilities than had his colleagues. He had never read the Constitution—his education had been neglected in early youth—and he believed that the duties of a self-respecting Minister of Finance began and ended with the guardianship of the key of the safe, which, as he could trust no other with so precious a charge, hung round his page 125neck by a shoe-lace. Had Goschen been a less conscientious person, the business of the country could have been continued even while he was providing for his appetite; but since no money could be paid out without the key of the safe, his frequent absences from the Treasury had called forth those remonstrances from his colleagues which I have already related. Now Goschen had a passion beyond the mere satisfaction of his grosser appetites. He was the professor of a dying art. At low tide his lone figure might be seen at the outer edge of the reef in sharp silhouette against the blue water, his vala girded up, his hand-net balanced on his forearm, lifting his skinny legs high, and sinking his feet into the page 126knee-deep water without making a ripple as he crept upon his prey. He would poise his body as he watched the manœuvres of a shoal of little fish, his right arm would be cautiously drawn back, and would presently dart out like lightning, cunningly flinging the small net in a circle round the shoal. Then, with incredible agility, he would leap upon the net, and transfer the entangled prey to the fish — basket hanging from his shoulder. The day came when, after an almost miraculous haul had demanded special effort from his agestiffened limbs, he felt at his neck for the precious key and found that it was missing. The string had snapt as he flung the net, and the key lay buried under a foot of water. He felt about for it with his toes; he lay face downwards in the water with his nose upon the coral, and crawled about with eyes wide open. Four hours later, when the reef was dry, he made a further unavailing search with his convict servants. Then he came to make his confession. His colleagues indulged in no vulgar recrimination. They had expected it, and their annoyance was tempered with the reflection that the loss of the key would be a full and adequate excuse for closing the Treasury for a time, and for thus allowing funds to accumulate. Goschen was sternly commanded to make further search, and a bunch of old duplicate keys from the Premier's office were tried one by one. A week passed during which Goschen daily scoured the reef at low tide, and the Premier's office was ransacked for a duplicate. The situation began to look serious. A month's salaries were due, and our creditors were becoming importunate. A locksmith must be sent for from New Zealand or the iron doors be page 127burst open. At last, dusty and rust-eaten, in the corner of a drawer a key was found which, when oiled and cleaned, proved to be the duplicate. The Treasury was reopened, and the news spread among the hungry creditors, who formed a continuous stream to and from the building for two days before their claims could be satisfied. But no one thought of telling Goschen. One day, after the Treasury had been open for a week, and the episode of the lost key had been almost forgotten, the old man sat down beside me in the Council-room. His anxieties had added another wrinkle to his furrowed brow, and he longed for a sympathetic ear. "What shall we do?" he said. "I am dead of looking for the key. It is now clear that it is lost. How would it be to break open the doors?" I felt the glow that must have warmed the heart of the pitiful Samaritan, as I told him that his office had been open for at least a week, and watched the smile of deep relief smooth out his harassed features. "Malo!" he said, "they never told me;" and he shuffled off to resume control of the finances of the country.

But my admiration for the patient Goschen has led me into a digression. I must return to his fallen chief.

When deep in empirical research into the abstruse science of book-keeping — in which an Auditor-General cannot seek instruction without a loss of public confidence and dignity—one can imagine with what satisfaction the many-sided statesman penned the words "By special vote of the Legislative Assembly;" "By vote of the Privy Council." While the issue of the year's finances lay hidden in the womb of the future, in the midst of uneasy doubt whether there would be cash enough in the page 128safe to pay the serried array of bills, how that ray of order and regularity must have soothed the faint twinges of a seared conscience! If the words comforted him as he stifled the remembrance of his own Constitution, who will quarrel with him for writing them? The obsequious Parliament would have voted the money had they been asked. But to ask them involved a loss of time and prestige, and detailed explanations, abhorrent to any right-minded dictator, would then have become necessary. If all the bills before Legislatures were to be actually read through three times, parliamentary business would be even more dilatory than it is; and if bills may be taken as read, why may not money be taken as voted? This must have been the Auditor-Premier's reflection as he ornamented his ledger with the soothing phrase; while the Hansard of the Legislative Assembly bore silent witness to the absence of all money votes but life-pensions to Mr Baker's children and a doctor's salary.

When the fateful day for balancing the books came round, the poor Auditor-General must have discovered that, besides his revenue and expenditure, he had a tertium quid to reckon with—a mysterious balance one way or the other that could no more be absorbed than the waste products of an abortive chemical experiment. One of his predecessors in the chair of the Wesleyan mission, a most estimable man, used to be troubled with the same difficulty when he presented his accounts to his district meeting. But he never allowed the fact that his credit and debit columns failed to balance by £5 to ruffle him. "You have only to subtract £2, 10s. from this column and add it to the other, and the two will be the same," page 129he would say with mild triumph. Whether Mr Baker had sat at the feet of this elder of the Church, or had arrived at the same discovery by an independent chain of reasoning, concerns us not: that he had devised such a process for the absorption of the tertium quid may be gathered from a naïve letter of his clerk and accountant, Mr O. Lahnstein, dated the 13th of August 1889: "The differences of $700 and $250 have to be taken out of the books. The easiest way would be by alteration, as the books have not been added up with ink." It must have been a very pretty piece of financial jugglery this absorption of the tertium quid among the columns that had not been added up with ink.

When the books were at last balanced, and the fleeting figures caught and fixed with pen and ink, the Annual Statement of Accounts was prepared for publication. There was a haziness of outline about this that invited scrutiny. Items such as "Police uniforms, hardware, parliamentary expenses, tanks, medicine, building materials, lime, &c, £769, 6s. 2d.," flung together in heterogeneous incongruity, provoked speculation as to what the "et-cetera" might comprise; and when the vouchers disclosed the fact that groceries (£35, 19s. 2d.), Mr Baker's subscription to the Northern Club, Auckland, his son's cab, tram, and boat hire (£46), and boots and shoes (£2, 9s. 9d.) were included, it was felt that the search had not been in vain. A wicked curiosity prompted us to write to the fallen Minister to inquire whether his club subscription had not been charged to the Government in error; but if we hoped to abash him, we were much mistaken. He had the honour to inform us that the page 130payment had been approved by his Majesty in Council. The minute-book was silent on the point, and the emphatic disclaimer of the king and his Ministers has plunged the question in a doubt from which I shall not attempt to extricate it. The £46 spent in cab-hire by the ex-Premier's son could not be impugned, for certain official despatches, written by the son in the family diningroom to his father in the study, beginning and ending, "Sir, I have the honour," showed that the rather stolid youth had spent much of this money in peripatetic diplomacy. He had called upon the British Admiral and a Colonial Minister to discuss the question of national defence and the purchase of ordnance; and his tolerant reception by these dignitaries seems to have turned his head. Even at the Auckland prices £46 would provide a vast number of jaunts, sweetened no doubt by the reflection that they were at the public expense. Possibly the £2, 9s. 9d., paid for boots and shoes on the authority of Mr Baker, junior, as Public Officer, was charged to the Treasury to cover the expenditure of shoe-leather in crossing the curbstone to the cabs.

An absentee First Minister was an expensive luxury to the Tongans. In 1889 it cost the country £171 to provide steamboat passages for him in his frequent trips to Auckland.

The last item in the statement—"Extraordinary expense, £62, 7s. 9d."—included the cost of an enlarged photograph of Mr Baker, besides some other mysterious payments which we were willing to believe deserved the classification given to them, although we could never discover their nature.

In the ledger we found the entry, "Loan Account, page 132£1085." Sateki, the Paymaster, enlightened us. The Free Church was about to hold its annual collection. The enthusiasm had been wrought by soul-stirring sermons to the pitch when a Tongan will strip the coat from his back, and fling it into the basin to win one more shout of applause; but it chanced that money was tight, there was no copra, and the Civil servants all had debts at the stores. Mr Baker had surmounted such difficulties before when he was a missionary, and he was not to be beaten now that he was Prime Minister as well. He advanced their salaries on the eve of the collection, and stopped the loans out of their pay as it became due. As none of them seem to have died or to have been dismissed before they had had time to earn the amount of their advances, the Government lost nothing but the interest.

The financial relations between the Government and the Free Church had been an inexhaustible theme for the Opposition, and there was some disappointment among the mission party that our revelations were not more startling. There was indeed nothing to reveal, for the only record of these transactions was contained in a few sheets of loose foolscap, evidently compiled from memory within the last few months; for although the transactions had extended over a period of five years, none of the entries were dated. Mr Watkin, the President of the Free Church, assured me that he knew nothing about the state of the account, and in this respect he was probably no more ignorant than his wily colleague. The Treasury seems to have acted as banker to the Free Church, and to have imported at public cost whatever goods were required by the Conference, who paid over money on account from time to time as the page 133takings of the collection-plate permitted. The account was never adjusted, but the Government is said to have advanced £5177, and to have received £5065, leaving a balance of £112 still due. When asked to pay this, Mr Watkin, who appeared relieved at getting off so easily, only asked for time. The Free Church had been living beyond its means.

It was hopeless to verify undated transactions five years old, but one strange entry provoked my curiosity. Among the Government disbursements I read, "Loss of mission copra, against-£167, 1s. 5d." In 1889 the Free Church collections were paid in copra, which the Government bought and stored in their sheds, crediting the Free Church with £1289, 9s. 3d., the estimated quantity being 120 tons or more. When, however, this copra was sold by the Government and weighed out to the purchaser, it proved to be so much less than the reputed quantity, that the loss could only be accounted for on the theory of fraudulent weighing by the native who received the contribution. Instead of charging the loss to the Free Church, the Government complacently consented to bear it.

In a burst of loyalty to his royal master the ex-Premier had, during the closing months of 1886, inaugurated a subscription for a statue of King George, to be executed by an Italian artist, and erected in the centre of the Malaekula, the public square of Nukualofa. Money flowed in rapidly. The High Commissioner headed the list, and scarcely a European or native in the group failed to give according to his means. Sateki, as trustee, took charge of the money, and the Premier was commissioned to order the page 134statue. Four years passed away, during which the curious learned that an artist in Italy was carving the marble at the very moment of the inquiry. But this picture of the patient Italian artist failed to satisfy the subscribers, and I was entreated to track the sealed bag of silver, last seen in the hand of Sateki, and to set the question of its fate beyond a doubt. Sateki remembered the occurrence perfectly. He had given the bag to the Treasury clerk for custody in the safe. That was all he knew. It was the last clerk but one—he who was dismissed for embezzlement. I waded through the incoherencies of the Treasury book till I found the entry I wanted, "Revenue from the Paymaster—£1299, 13s. 6d.," — the exact amount of the subscriptions—used for purposes of general expenditure. Let us charitably suppose that the purchase of a statue was really intended, and that, when the Premier published the financial statement in which this sum figured as revenue, the divers cares of office had chased the recollection of its purpose from his mind.

It so happened that he was smarting from an action for libel in which the plaintiffs, the Wesleyan Mission, had been successful, and the spectacle of their reverses in the religious strife in Tonga tempted him to turn aside and curse them. In seven long letters to the 'Melbourne Age,' he worked up his seven hours' visit into an indictment of their agents personally and their methods in general, contriving by the way to bespatter Mr Baker with the eulogy of faint dispraise. He wrote of the history of the islands, lacking, we may charitably suppose, the time to read more than the opening chapter of Mariner's 'Tonga,' which he glibly quotes as his authority for the remarkable statement that King George was the grandson of Finau, and that the latter murdered the Tui Tonga. He wrote of Mr George Brown, and so unlovely is the picture that he paints of the gifted Secretary of page 136Missions, that the reader instinctively scrutinises the linespaces for the record of some affront offered to the special correspondent. "He calls upon me," says the guileless Vagabond, "as the heathen did upon Balaam, to also curse the Premier of Tonga." But not even the son of Beor could surpass Mr Julian Thomas in incorruptibility and a delicate sense of honour; for he at least allowed the Balak to offer burnt sacrifice, and the latter, if we may believe him, feared the blunting influence of even a dinner upon his sensitive conscience. "I may hint here that I am bidden to sib at meat with the king, … but neither from monarch nor Premier nor missionary could I accept the slightest hospitality. I do not know what I may have to say about each, and keep perfectly unfettered and unbiassed by any considerations which the reception of any courtesies might enforce upon me. My attitude in this matter rather offends the Tongan Premier."

It is a fine image this of the pressman, after years spent in the hurly-burly of colonial journalism, so punctilious of his honour that he puts behind him the temptations of a meal, lest they turn him from the stern duty which he owes to society. Would that no rude hand had been put forth to smutch so fair a picture! But there in damning evidence lay the voucher "for the right of reprinting 'Holy Tonga,'" signed by The Vagabond as claimant, and by its side a copy of Mr Baker's letter inviting him to fix his own honorarium, and his reply naming the modest sum of £50.

The letters to the 'Age' were reprinted in Auckland in pamphlet form under the title of 'Holy Tonga,' and a thousand copies now lay upon the floor of the Premier's page 137office. Since Mr Baker shared with Mr Watkin the honour of The Vagabond's eulogy, the Free Church had with unanswerable logic been debited with half the "honorarium"; but the remaining £62, 15s. was a dead loss to the Government. The fate of the pamphlet was decided from the moment when a kind friend translated to Tungi the following passage: "Tungi wipes his greasy fingers on his fat thighs, and then looks up at us with a query in his wicked black eyes…. He is very obese, the fat swelling into wrinkles on his wrists and legs like those of a prize baby. He looks sensual and wicked, and strikes us as the very model of a black Tiberius."

But the late Premier, probably uneasy as to the view that might be formed regarding his share in the transaction, authorised his son to buy the pamphlet at the price it had cost the Treasury. The offer was tempting in view of the emptiness of the Exchequer, but I could not close with it until the consent of my colleagues had been obtained. The proposal was laid before the Cabinet. Kubu and Tukuaho were against making terms with Mr Baker of any kind; Sateki thought that the money should not be refused; the Chief-Justice did not catch the proposal, and Goschen's thoughts were elsewhere. Then Tungi rose. He had heard, he said, that the book was libellous, and spoke evil of dignities. He thought he remembered seeing the white man who wrote it: he was a man of disreputable appearance (matamata tu'a), and he looked as if he drank much strong kava. If the book were sold Mr Baker would distribute it abroad, and Tonga would have an evil smell. 'Holy Tonga' was brought to judgment and condemned to suffer at the stake, like many a page 138better book before it. But the time of execution was put off from day to day, and I strongly suspect that the thousand copies still lie piled away forgotten in the Premier's back-office.

There were no offers to buy back the other extravagances of the late Premier, though the inventory showed a tempting variety. There was a passenger car to run on the tram-line from the wharf to the banana plantation; a safe that cost £150, so large as to be unsaleable even in Auckland; a book of New Zealand birds costing £11, 11s., bought in order that Mr Baker's name might figure on the title-page as joint patron with the Queen and other personages; an electric-light installation of an antiquated and useless pattern; a full outfit of electrical toys, induction coils, miniature pumps, tiny lights, dancing-dolls, &c.; and a quantity of quasi-scientific apparatus stored in the Fale Saienisi (Science House) at the College; besides a vast quantity of stores of all kinds dissipated among the natives.

We had now to devise some system of book-keeping for the revenue clerks, simplified to suit that peculiar mathematical talent that can solve a problem in higher algebra without being able to add up a column of figures correctly, yet sufficiently elaborate to admit of an accurate statement of revenue from any source at a given time, and of a check being kept upon dishonest officials.

We abolished at one sweep the old books with their complicated headings, and substituted common cash-books for them. The revenue collectors gave printed receipts for every payment made to them, retaining a duplicate to show to the officer who audited their books. Once a-week page 139they paid their revenue to the sub-treasurer, who gave them a receipt, which they sent every month, pinned to a copy of their cash-books, to Nukualofa. The sub-treasurer had also to post a copy of his book to the capital, where it was carefully compared with the receipts he had given to the revenue collectors. If they failed to agree, it was plain that the sub-treasurer had received more than he accounted for, and any defalcations of the revenue collectors could be checked by an examination of the numbered butts of their receipt-books. Embezzlement could therefore only pass unnoticed if the sub-treasurer and the revenue collectors were in league to defraud the country This elementary trap was no sooner set than it secured a quarry. The monthly statement of the sub-treasurer of Vavau tallied with the receipts he had given to the revenue collectors in so far as the total was concerned; but the various items, when added up, fell short of the reputed amount by some 70 dollars. Each item had been clipped in accordance with a system that had probably been going on for years without detection. Explanations were called for; but the sub-treasurer took the high ground that as it cast a personal reflection on his honour, the demand was beneath his notice. My colleagues were loath to proceed to extremities; for the defaulter was highly connected in Vavau, and was likely to use his influence to estrange the Civil servants already wavering in their loyalty to the Government. He was, moreover, the pet clerk of old Inoke Fotu, Kubu's father, on whose devotion we counted to defeat the hostile influence of Manase, the Governor. But I was firm. Campbell had established the defalcations without a doubt; the facts page 140were well known to numbers of the native clerks; and to allow so flagrant an offence to go unpunished would be to invite dishonesty from all our employees. Tukuaho at last gave way so far as to consent to the man's dismissal, if I would allow him to bring the end about in his own way. He showed me a letter from the defaulter in which he forgave him (Tukuaho) from his heart for the wrong he had done him. It was, he wrote, not Tukuaho's fault that so wicked a conspiracy had been formed, for he knew that it was the work of these deceitful foreigners who were his advisers; and in a magnificent peroration he besought him by their common God, Jehovah (with whom they both appeared to have relations of an intimacy denied to deceitful foreigners), to become the saviour of his country by casting out his two advisers, especially Kamibeli, and by restoring him (the writer) to the eminence to which his own superior qualities had raised him. The tone of the letter was magnanimous throughout, and from a clerk guilty of embezzlement to the Premier of the country it would have been a startling production in any other part of the world. Tukuaho's object was to get the man away from his friends in Vavau before dealing with him. He therefore invited him to clear himself before the Cabinet in Nukualofa, handing over his office during his absence to the sub-treasurer of Haapai. He swallowed the bait, and in due course stood at the bar of the Council-house to clear his character before his Majesty's Ministers. He was a large cow-faced man, with his lips pursed into a perpetual whistle. I was commissioned by Goschen to prefer the charge, and described the discrepancy between his monthly statement and the receipts page 141he had given to the revenue collectors. The accused was calm, collected, and perfectly respectful. He had with him his books for the last three years, and he proceeded to read them, pausing at intervals to take breath and to

"He had with him his books for the last three years."

explain that, but for Mr Baker of execrable memory, the matter would be clear to a person of even Campbell's limited comprehension. Although his harangue had as much to do with the point at issue as it had with the page 142English Budget, I could see that the array of figures had produced a favourable impression. It was in vain that I put direct questions to the accused about the missing $70; he continued blandly to quote the monetary transactions of past years with the superior consciousness of convincing argument. Goschen was nodding; Tungi wore the expression of a disinterested spectator at a prize-fight; Kubu was honestly trying to understand what it was all about; and Tukuaho was wavering between his faith in me and his respect for the display of erudition on the part of the defaulting treasurer. At my instance the accused was cut short, and ordered to withdraw while we discussed the matter. As soon as he was released from the spell of the treasurer's bovine countenance, Tukuaho pointed out that, whether the charge was proved or not, it was clear that the books were badly kept to have given rise to any doubts on the score of the treasurer's honesty; and as the work was going on very well in his absence, he thought he should be relieved of active employment until the meeting of Parliament, who might reinstate him if they pleased. This middle course having been agreed to, the cow-faced sub-treasurer was sent home to do his worst with the members for Vavau. Alas for human propositions! When Parliament did meet, his grievances were forgotten in the intoxication of debate, and in the enthusiasm evoked by a Ministry who catered well for the physical wants of its supporters. Manase, his chief ally, was himself impeached, and his case never even came to a hearing.