Limitations of sovereign power

In the society of the small islands, cloven as it is by reason of mother-right, caste, and secret societies, and with a powerful priestly class, we seldom meet with kings, in the European sense, such as Kamehameha I. Europeans found them because they looked for them; and many first rose to greatness by means of the presents received from Europeans and the respect paid by them. In New Zealand the ariki, or divine chief, instructed by his father or grandfather in the sacred traditions, stood high above secular chiefs and priests. He comprised in himself the power of both, could put on and take off taboo, or decide the time for field-operations, and the places for burials. On the other hand, the spiritual power or mana of the chief, if he were not ariki as well, depended on his personal authority; and the mana of the priest, if he again were not also ariki, was only obeyed in respect of his relation to the gods. Thus, too, hereditary chiefship is only recognised where it is believed that there has been a transmission of the mana.

Warrior of the Solomon Islands. (From the Godeffroy Album.)
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The mystical element in this conception exercises a great power over people's minds. When a powerful chief in the New Hebrides has his son brought up as a Christian, it is taken for granted that the spiritual force which would qualify him for the succession vanishes. So again in the Solomon Islands the dignity of a chief is in general not hereditary; but the bravest man is elected to the post by the elders. In some other islands, too, the elders have the paramount influence, while the chief's dignity is merely nominal. Similarly the elders are the priests, the mediators between the living and the dead, and what is tabooed by them is sacred. Practical experience has taught white men that in New Britain and New Ireland even the greatness of power which they wish to see the chiefs possess in the interests of order is hardly to be artificially created; and the same in New Guinea. On the other hand, wherever warlike conditions prevailed, the dignity of the chief grew in importance. It was especially so in Fiji, where we have a completely military organisation, under which the villages tributary to one chief, and governed by chiefs of lower rank, were divided into official districts.

The appellations of the chiefs also point to their military character. Often they appear merely as doughty warriors who, if they do not spring from a family of the rank of chiefs, have been adopted into one on account of their courage. Saturated as this life is with religion, and military as is its character, a splitting of the kingship between a peace-king with shadowy power and a war-king was sure to follow. Thus beside the head of the state another figure often towers up, whether the war-chief or, as in Radack, the commander of the great ship. In Samoa the chiefship has undergone a development in the direction of aristocracy; in Hawaii, in that of monarchy. In the Samoan party-fights, which since 1876 have come into contact with European politics, the electoral chiefs always came to the front, while the king appeared dependent on them. In the neighbouring Gilberts the preponderance of landowners has created a sort of plutocracy. They recur in Hawaii as Alii, and in Kamehameha's monarchical constitution they held a modest position as the "assembly of chiefs," with different ranks of taboo.

A representative intermediary between king and people appears in some form everywhere; the fono of Samoa, the aha-alii of Hawaii, show it in various stages of development. It has a strong tendency to assume the character of a secret society. Special assemblies are called together by the chief or his representative on important occasions, especially when war threatens. They deliberate often for days together with many ceremonies and lengthy speeches. From this the transition to modern constitutionalism or its imitation was not difficult. The constitution of Kamehameha III. ordained that the heir to the crown should be nominated by king and chiefs acting together. Failing this the chiefs were to do what was necessary in conjunction with the representatives of the people. Here again the aristocratic principle corrects the patriarchal, and thus the high pitch which despotism has reached rests more upon the pressure of class and caste than upon the overpowering will of a single man. Its profound effects can only be explained in this way; only in this way could it permeate all conditions of life. In any case the effects were far less upon the privileged than upon those who had no rights - the oppressed; and thence also came the sadly rapid decay of this society.

An element which is often overlooked among the state institutions of the Oceanians is the small size of their territories. On the lowest stage of the formation of states, we find little communes, or little groups of communes, allied in blood, which vegetate under their own village chiefs or elders. In the largest part of New Guinea, even these dignitaries are lacking; social and family relations embracing also political, and every village on the whole forming a state of itself. In the Ruk group, they speak of thirty-nine tribes and seventy-three states. Since there is no room for the development of a power founded upon extensive possession in land and people, it is less the actual conditions of power than traditions, personal relations, and political intrigues, which decide matters in the island groups. A certain order of the lands, in point of rank, is traditional from old times; only one larger archipelago formed a single state, and how often did that fall to pieces? The very largest islands, New Guinea and New Zealand, never possessed a single state of any importance.

As in the case of class organisation, so also in the government, there is a patriarchal air. The people are very sensitive on the point whether the king takes trouble, or utilises the advantages of his office to his own profit. Thus in Kubary's time, the King of Korror was deposed for his avarice. In Tahiti, strangers might see the king putting his hand to the paddle in his own canoe, and the meanest man could speak freely with him. These are the humanising effects of nature which bestows her gifts with equal freedom on rich and poor, and of the small scale on which everything was constructed. But traces of an anarchical time emerge even more strongly than those of the patriarchal. Before the nomination of a successor, an interregnum as a change from the preceding and subsequent hard times of compulsion is wont to loosen all political restraints; it is a legalised anarchy.