Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 396, 24 February 1892 — Page 4

KA LEO O KA LAHUI.

"E Mau ke Ea o ka Aina i ka Pono."

 

KA LEO

John E. Bush.

I una Hooponopono a me Puuku.

WEDNESDAY FEB. 24, 1892.

            He Receives His Commission.

It is with unfeigned pleasure that we announce the appointment of Mr. Wm. Cummings, as Road Supervisor for Honolulu.  We say, pleasure , because it is a cause of  congratulation, and a favorable sign to the electors, that there voice as the people have been recognized, and the commission has been as it were extorted from her Majesty’s government, the members of whom, including herself, were opposed to the Liberal Party and to Mr. Cummings as there nominee.

This is the first appointment made, within the time of the organization of a National Hawaiian Party, and is in accordance with popular rights, as recognized in other countries. Though the commission has been issued, to Mr. Cummings, its, is with no thanks to Mr. Parker or any member of his administration, as it is well known, that they in conllusion with capitalists, have endeavored to frustrate the securing of bondsmen for Mr. C., a phase which has been instituted in our laws by the good reformers, in order to prevent native Hawaiians from filling offices of trust and emolument in their own country!!!

 

THE THIRD DISTRICT

Editor Ka Leo:-

The constitutional prohibition regarding candidates for representatives reads thus: * * * and no executive or judicial officer, or any contractor, or employee of the government, or any person in the receipt of salary or emolument, from the government, shall be eligible to election to the Legislature of the Hawaiian Kingdom or to hold the position of an elective member of the same, and it is sought by the government and missionary organs to invoke this clause, and its construction by the Supreme Court, against the candidature and election of C.W. Ashford as a representative to the legislature from the third district of Honolulu. 

The conclusions arrived at, and reasons assigned therefore, by Mr. Justice McCully, who wrote the opinion of the Court are expressed (so far as Notaries are concerned) in these words: “ I have to say that Notaries public, receiving appointment by the King in Privy Council on the nomination of the Minister of the Interior, being subjects, being required to take an oath of office, and holding office during his Majesty’s pleasure ( see Section 1266, 1267 of the Code), are officers, and come within the prohibition of Article 20 of the Constitution.”  The learned Judge, without citing a single precedent, thus gives four distinct reasons, causes or conditions, which constitute Notaries “officers” under Article 20: via (1) the appointment by the King in Privy Council on the nomination of the Minister of Interior: (2) being subjects; (3) being required to take an oath of office; and (4) holding office during his Majesty’s pleasure.  The plain inference is that the cause of the prohibitions being cumulative, it requires the existence of all these four conditions to effect the result found.  But if not so, then which one or two or three are unnecessary –and which three or two or one is necessary_ to retain the prohibition in force?

By chapter XI, Law of 1887, page 17, section 1266 of Civil Code is amended and made to read as follows: “Sec. 1266. There shall be appointed by the Minister of Interior one or more suitable persons in each of the judicial circuits of the Kingdom to be Notaries public and to hold office as such Notaries until removed by such Ministers”- thus taking from the King the power of both appointing and removing Notaries, i.e., sweeping away conditions (1) and (4) above mentioned.  The argument of the court later or in the same opinion gives as a reason for agents to take acknowledgement to deeds coming within the prohibition, the following- they hold office at the pleasure of the Registrar, and the Registrar holds office at the pleasure of the King.  This argument if correct cannot apply to the case of Notaries, because the Minister who appoints has never held office “at the pleasure of the King” since June 30 ^th 1887.  We thus see two of the four reasons given by the court in their opinion of August 29 ^th 1887, swept out of existence by the above act, signed by the King November 25 ^th 1887.

A third condition – “being required to take the oath of office “- seems scarce worth a serious comment, in view of the applications of that condition in other directions.  For instance, take Attorneys –at- law.  Are they not appointees of the Supreme Court?  Are their commissions not signed by the Chief Justice?  Does not the Chief Justice hold his commission from the King?  (Article 71, Constitution).   Are not the appointees required to taken an “oath of office?” (Section  1065, Compiled Laws).  Are they not removable by the appointing power?  (See opinion of McCully, J., iu re agents to take acknowledgments to deeds, supra ).  Yet has any partisan “law” crank, to say nothing of a Supreme Court Judge, ever had the hardihood to declare that Attorney’s come to within the prohibitions of Article 20, for “being required to take the oath of office,” or for any or all other of the causes above enumerated?

But the most grotesque claim of all is that because “being a citizen” is necessary to being a Notary, ergo, being a Notary is a bar to eligibility, or does or should in any manner contribute to the prohibition under discussion.  Why “being a citizen” is necessary to eligibility (Article Constitution): and it is a most amusing instance of the horse-chestnut, chestnut horse logic which can twist it into a prohibition in case of a representative, because it is a condition precedent as a Notary.  Let us come back to the Attorney again. Is not “being a subject” a sine quo aoa of admission to the bar?  (Section 1065 Constituted Laws: Rule 28 of the Supreme Court Ex facto Ashford, a Haw. Rep,614 @.  By common usage; by custom to which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary; by innumerable dicta in judicial decisions; by the ruling and practice of courts everywhere.  Attorneys-at-law are “officers of the court.”  Who pretends that an Attorney is “prohibited” by Article 20, from the simple fact of his being an Attorney-even with all these “disqualifying” conditions surrounding him and attached to him as conditions precedent to his admission to the bar- conditions far outrunning those who are marshalled by the off-hand opinion (not the judicial opinion, not the LAW) of August 29 ^th 1887, to prove that a Notary is within the prohibition, but an Attorney is not.

It would be less that fair, however, to omit recalling the fact that the appointment of C.W. Ashford as a Notary was under the law of November 25 ^th , which swept away the only points on which the opinion of August 29 ^th was based, to wit, (1) and (4) above mentioned.   It has been shown that (2) and (3) are entirely disregard in this connection, elsewhere, and the plain inference is that they, standing alone, would never have been invoked as a reason for the rule sustaining prohibition.  Judges, while practicing lawyers, acquire the habit of following the wording of statutes- even where a portion may not be entirely relevent – in pleadings and other legal document; and the conditions covered by (2) and (3) probably become embodied in the opinion referred to in some such way.  This much is certain – that the case before us bristles with facts strongly refuting they of the ineligibility of Notaries, under the law as it now exists: Only one of these facts (or chain of facts) has been touched upon herein.  A court of review never goes farther than to find a single vitiating legal fact, in order to reverse a decision.  The decision on which the ineligibility is howled by the Boodlers and echoed by the Psalm singers is not LAW, neither is it authority.  At any rate the reasons for it have vanished by subsequent legislation; and among the commonest elementary maxims is one to the effect that when the reason of a rule fails, the rule itself ceases to exist.

LEX SCRIPTA.

 

WHAT I SAW

Sir: - Through the medium of your well-read columns I desire to give the public a little insight into the “ways that are dark”, and the unseemly methods employed on the plantation I lately left, which “always,” I deeply regret, prevail in general among nearly all the plantations on the Islands.  There is one particular place on this island however, that I wish to mention, where the treatment of laborers is inhuman, and where all the favors and blessings of a bountiful Creator has been lavished in vain.  I am a simple mechanic, earning my bread by honest toil, yet, ever since I left my mother’s knee, did I realize fully the inhumanity of man and the selfishness of those who by a freak of fortune have been clothed in a little brief authority.  The treatment of contract labor on the said plantation is wholly of the days of the “underground railway” and of the “middle passage” of slavery days. During my service, nine Japanese died of semi-starvation, and were hustled into their everlasting beds, clothed in jackets of old scanting, coffins being dear; according to the management; and they were only Japs anyhow.  Two little children died of typhoid, induced by the absence of proper sanitary accomodations for the workingmen and their families, one white and one Portuguese.  I thought I could show my sympathy by assisting the poor parents in preparing the poor little innocents for decent burial, and offered to make a couple of coffins for these heirs of the Kingdom to come; but my sympathy was coldly met with the heartless reply from the Manager, that lumber costs money, and that expence must be saved, as the shop was in need, the plantation on the verge of bankruptcy, and that Herr von Boss in Honolulu, was an advocate of retrenchment  and a staunch friend of “sweaters,” “shavers,” and economizers of Fatherland-Hebrew extraction.  This Bobadil, in cap and bells, strolled leisurely to the place of business of an Asiatic dealer in varieties and borrowed (?) two soap boxes to hide the mortality of these infants in eighteen inches of mortgaged soil.  This is old Shylock, and according to the latest methods in Rhineland, Beerland and Fatherland.

Es braust ein wie Ruf wie Donnerhall, Wie Schwertgerlirr and Wogenprall.

Let no man deny facts.  I speak what I know, and I feel like my great countryman when he uttered these memorable words “I am commanded by conscience to speak the truth, the truth I speak, impugn it who so list”.  An angel from the Heavenly shore would not save this said Voltalla from condemnation both now and evermore.

                      MECHANICS.

 

ON DIT.

That in case of a row, the government would be able to land their troops from the “harbor defence” vessel and enforce the “bayonet clause.”

 

That for a perfect sample of the missionary newspaper, one need not seek farther than the Nupepa Kuokoa.

 

That a new perfume manufactory is to be established very soon in Honolulu.  That the scent is to be called “Nuuanu Breezes,” and is to be distilled from the river bed in the vicinity of the Chinese wash house on King Street.

 

That the meat trust ought in common fairness to reduce the price of their beef, seeing that the police are going the rounds of the streets with lassos catching all the stray sausage meet.

 

That mutton can be bought in New Zealand at wholesale for two cents to three cents a pound.  That there is “money in it” for anyone importing mutton here from New Zealand during the present trust prices ruling in Honolulu.

 

That it is high time there was a public annalist appointed to sample the milk, ground coffee, lard, and other articles consumed by the people, and that the scales and weights of our retail stores would be none the worse if they were overhauled by the authorities.

 

That bleeding Sam @ from Hawaii very much @ by his two financial friends.

 

That the public is cautioned to be careful how they take the Bullet- in as there have been some notable instances of sudden death lately from leaden editorials and homeopathic squibs.

 

That Charley smirkingly intimates to the Queen that he will baffle the nominee for Road Supervisor, because it suits her.  This little pecularity of Charley, don’t yer know, helped to put his colleagues out of office once and may again, but ‘tis dangerous practice and has a reactionary tendency.

 

Platform of Principle

OF THE

HAWAIIAN NATIONAL LIBERAL PARTY.

PUBLIC SERVANTS

6. Better laws should regulate the Civil Service.  The principles of the election of officers of the government by the people should be established, and no man should be allowed to hold more than one office of profit, whilst salaries should be adequate compensation for the services rendered.  All excessive salaries should be reduced and all sinecures or superfluous offices abolished.

PROTECTION TO THE LABORING CLASSES

9. We shall endorse all measure tending to improve the condition of the working classes, and consequently, with out injuring any vested rights, we will advocate laws to prevent all further imported or employment of contract-labor of any kind, upon conditions which will bring it into a ruinous and degrading competition with free Hawaiian or white labor.  We shall also, in the interest of the better protection of the poor, ask for more liberal exemption of their property from forced sale on execution, and from seizure in bankruptcy proceeding.

SMALL FARMING AND HOME STEADS.

10.     The wealthy fraction of our population have hitherto prevented the development of an independent class of citizens;  the public lands have been acquired and have been tied up in a few hands of parcelled to suit favorites, and small farmers and planters have been driven out by corporations of combinations of capitalists; but as small farming is conductive to the stability of the State, it should be encouraged by a new and more liberal Homestead act, by which the ownership of small tracts of land and the settlement thereon of families of our present population, - and especially of the native Hawaiians who have been left almost homeless in there country- should be rendered possible. To that end, the Government and Crown lands, (in so far as can be done without invoking vested rights) should be developed as soon as possible to homesteads, and conferred upon bona-fide settlers free of taxes for a limited period.

It should be the further aim of government to at once, so far improve the means of transportation – local, national and international, - as to provide, in all the districts, cheap means of conveying the product of the soil to market.

ELECTORAL RIHGT.

11. We hold that upright and honest manhood, and not the possession of wealth, arbitrarily fixed, should construe the right to vote for nobles aw well as representatives and no more power should be accorded to the ballot of the rich man than to the ballot of the poor man.  The discrimination in favor of wealth now made in our Constitution is contrary to all the eternal principles of right and justice, and must be abolished.  To this end, we favor a leveling of the present distinction of wealth and classes which blemish our laws with support of the right to vote for the nobles, thereby restoring to the native Hawaiians priviliges which pertain to them in their own country, and of which they have been unjustly deprived.

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS

12. We favor the expenditure of sufficient means to secure a number of needed public improvements on Oahu and other islands; school, railroads and harbors and wharves, public light and also a thorough system of reservoirs and water works, not only for Honolulu, but throughout the other islands.