The Spirit Of Democracy

The Sandwich Islands.

The New York Tribune says that the Aborigines of the Sandwich Islands are rapidly perishing, from the vices which too generally flourish in rank luxuriance among the savage people, especially in mild latitudes, who have been brought suddenly in contact with its more pernicious influences, such as too commonly attend large congregations of seamen. The chief seaports of Hawaii have long been sinks of debauchery and vice, in defiance of the most determined efforts of the Missionaries who really bear sway there, and who have no difficulty in tracing to the free sale and diffusion of alcoholic liquors, much of the sexual and other depravity which they find so general and so irresistible. They, therefore, some years since induced the King to impose an import duty of $5 per gallon on foreign liquors—and this duty is a chief pretext for the outrages consummated and those meditated by France on the independence and rights of the Islanders. The brandy manufacturers of France have undoubtedly suffered in their trade from the heavy duty imposed by King Kamehameha and his Ministers on their staple; but the Islanders would suffer incomparably more from the absence of that duty, as experience has amply shown, and the question involved is one of which Hawaii is properly the sole arbiter. Yet it is mainly on account of this duty on brandy, and the refusal of the King to repeal it, that France made her former foray on the islands, and subjected them to heavy losses and injuries by her hostile demonstrations. The final adjustment of the difficulty has been postponed to this time, when it is rumored that a French fleet is already in the Pacific on its way to Honolulu, bearing the ultimatum of the perjured assassin of the Liberties of France, which amounts in substance to this:—'Admit our brandy at a nominal duty, and allow our priests all the privileges you award to their Protestant rivals, with a pro rata share of your public school money, or we will subjugate and annex your entire country.' Against these atrocious demands the King has no resource but in an appeal to the United States or Great Britain, and he has accordingly appealed to both, soliciting support, and willing to accept a Protectorate, or even to surrender his territory absolutely into our possession, rather than pass under the yoke of Louis Napoleon.