Requiescat

Last week there died at 82, the only President of a short-lived republic.

On April 23, in the 19th year (1844) of the reign of His Majesty, Kamehameha III, Daniel Dole and his wife Emily Ballard, missionaries of Christ to the Kanakas, took great joy. Their joyance was not in their official capacity, for there were still troublous times in the Sandwich Islands. For nearly 25 years American missionaries had been establshed on the Islands, and although human sacrifice, polyandry, polygamy and the unspeakable punalua were disappearing and a prohibition law had been enacted, license and drunkenness were still rampant and, only five years before, French Naval officers had raped the laws of the kingdom, imported liquor, extorted money, introduced Roman Catholic priests. But the joyance of the Doles could not be extinguished by such considerations, for to them had been born a son christened Sanford Ballard Dole.

While he was still a boy playing in the shade of the ohia-lehuas, digging yams and arums under the kukui, the algarola and the bastard sandalwood, the little kingdom went from bad to better and from better to worse, while the corpulent monarchs, after their daily lomi-lomi, shuffled across and off this mortal coil. Young Dole was educated at Oahu College, and then went to Williams College. He received his law training in Boston and returned again to the Islands, but still the great 200, 300, 400 Ib. monarchs, begarlanded, strutted on their way --an illustrious dynasty, Kamehameha III, Kamehameha IV, Kamehameha V, Lunalilo, Kalakaua. A Mormon colony settled there; an adventurer came up from Sumatra, Walter Murray Gibson, and became Minister; prohobition was abolished; Chinese settlers came, Spaniards, Japanese, Portuguese. A lottery was chartered, medicine men and opium venders were licensed.

In 1887 the long-suffering people revolted and King Kalakaua granted the insurgents what was known as the "Bayonet Constitution." It came about at that time that Sanford B. Dole, who had been working with the reform party in the legislature, was made Judge of the Hawaiian Supreme Court. In 1890 the King died in California and his sister, Mrs. Lydia Dominis (styled Liliuokalani), the regent, was crowned. She soon showed herself reactionary. Another revolt was led by the "sons of the missionaries." The Queen was forced to abdicate. Sanford B. Dole was declared President of the Republic of Hawaii pending annexation to the U. S. A treaty of annexation was negotiated, but President Cleveland came into office and withdrew the treaty. He sent out a commissioner, who hauled down the U. S. flag and demanded the restoration of the Queen if she would promise good behavior. Across 2,000 miles of water and 3,000 miles of land, President Dole faced President Cleveland and refused to abandon Hawaiian democracy to any king or queen. When McKinley was inaugurated in 1897, a new treaty of annexation was drawn and ratified. Sanford B. Dole, the President, became Sanford B. Dole, the Territorial Governor--and so he ruled for six years longer.

Last week, at 82, Sanford Dole, summoned by his relatives, passed peacefully through the ivory portal, through which had marched ahead the five Kamehamehas, Lunalilo, Kalakaua, Liliuokalani. All Hawaii was dolorous. There were tears instead of the shocking orgies, the unbounded license with which the Kanakas used to celebrate the death of their monarchs, the passing of the law incarnate.