TO THE EDITOR OF THE “TIMES”

     Samoa, June 22, 1892.

Sir, ­I read in a New Zealand paper that you published my last with misgiving.  The writer then goes on to remind me that I am a novelist, and to bid me return to my romances and leave the affairs of Samoa to sub-editors in distant quarters of the world.  “We, in common with other journals, have correspondents in Samoa,” he complains, “and yet we have no news from them of the curious conspiracy which Mr. Stevenson appears to have unearthed, and which, if it had any real existence, would be known to everybody on the island.”  As this is the only voice which has yet reached me from beyond the seas, I am constrained to make some answer.  But it must not be supposed that, though you may perhaps have been alone to publish, I have been alone to write.  The same story is now in the hands of the three Governments from their respective Consuls.  Not only so, but the complaint of the municipal council, drawn by two able solicitors, has been likewise laid before them.

This at least is public, and I may say notorious.  The solicitors were authorised to proceed with their task at a public meeting.  The President (for I was there and heard him) approved the step, though he refrained from voting.  But he seems to have entertained a hope of burking, or, at least, indefinitely postponing, the whole business, and, when the meeting was over, and its proceedings had been approved (as is necessary) by the Consular Board, he neglected to notify the two gentlemen appointed of that approval.  In a large city the trick might have succeeded for a time; in a village like Apia, where all news leaks out and the King meets the cobbler daily, it did no more than to advertise his own artfulness.  And the next he learned, the case for the municipal council had been prepared, approved by the Consuls, and despatched to the Great Powers.  I am accustomed to have my word doubted in this matter, and must here look to have it doubted once again.  But the fact is certain.  The two solicitors (Messrs. Carruthers and Cooper) were actually cited to appear before the Chief Justice in the Supreme Court.  I have seen the summons, and the summons was the first and last of this State trial.  The proceeding, instituted in an hour of temper, was, in a moment of reaction, allowed to drop.

About the same date a final blow befell the Government of Mulinuu.  Let me remind you, sir, of the situation.  The funds of the municipality had been suddenly seized, on what appeared a collusive judgment, by the bankrupt Government of Mulinuu.  The paper, the organ of opposition, was bought by a man of straw; and it was found the purchase-money had been paid in rouleaux from the Government safes.  The Government consisted of two men.  One, the President and treasurer, had a ready means to clear himself and dispose for ever of the scandal ­that means, apart from any scandal, was his mere, immediate duty, ­viz., to have his balance verified.  And he has refused to do so, and he still refuses.  But the other, though he sits abstruse, must not think to escape his share of blame.  He holds a high situation; he is our chief magistrate, he has heard this miserable tale of the rouleaux, at which the Consuls looked so black, and why has he done nothing?  When he found that the case against himself and his colleague had gone to the three Powers a little of the suddenest, he could launch summonses (which it seems he was afterwards glad to disavow) against Messrs. Cooper and Carruthers.  But then, when the whole island murmured ­then, when a large sum which could be traced to the Government treasuries was found figuring in the hands of a man of straw ­where were his thunderbolts then?  For more than a month the scandal has hung black about his colleague; for more than a month he has sat inert and silent; for more than a month, in consequence, the last spark of trust in him has quite died out.

In was in these circumstances that the Government of Mulinuu approached the municipal council with a proposal to levy fresh taxes from the whites.  It was in these circumstances that the municipal council answered, No.  Public works have ceased, the destination of public moneys is kept secret, and the municipal council resolved to stop supplies.

At this, it seems, the Government awoke to a sense of their position.  The natives had long ceased to pay them; now the whites had followed suit.  Destitution had succeeded to embarrassment.  And they made haste to join with themselves another who did not share in their unpopularity.  This gentleman, Mr. Thomas Maben, Government surveyor, is himself deservedly popular, and the office created for him, that of Secretary of State, is one in which, under happier auspices, he might accomplish much.  He is promised a free hand; he has succeeded to, and is to exercise entirely, those vague functions claimed by the President under his style of adviser to the King.  It will be well if it is found to be so in the field of practice.  It will be well if Mr. Maben find any funds left for his not exorbitant salary.  It would doubtless have been better, in this day of their destitution and in the midst of growing Samoan murmurs against the high salaries of whites, if the Government could have fallen on some expedient which did not imply another.  And there is a question one would fain have answered.  The President claims to hold two offices ­that of adviser to the King, that of President of the Municipal Council.  A year ago, in the time of the dynamite affair, he proposed to resign the second and retain his whole emoluments as adviser to the King.  He has now practically resigned the first; and we wish to know if he now proposes to retain his entire salary as President of the Council. ­I am, etc.,

     ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.