We have here a problem of conduct, and what seems an image of inconsistency, very hard at the first sight to be solved by any European. Plainly Mataafa does not act at random. Plainly, in the depths of his Samoan mind, he regards his attitude as regular and constitutional. It may be unexpected, it may be inauspicious, it may be undesirable; but he thinks it--and perhaps it is--in full accordance with those "laws and customs of Samoa" ignorantly invoked by the draughtsmen of the Berlin Act. The point is worth an effort of comprehension; a man's life may yet depend upon it. Let us conceive, in the first place, that there are five separate kingships in Samoa, though not always five different kings; and that though one man, by holding the five royal names, might become king in _all parts_ of Samoa, there is perhaps no such matter as a kingship of all Samoa. He who holds one royal name would be, upon this view, as much a sovereign person as he who should chance to hold the other four; he would have less territory and fewer subjects, but the like independence and an equal royalty. Now Mataafa, even if all debatable points were decided against him, is still Tuiatua, and as such, on this hypothesis, a sovereign prince. In the second place, the draughtsmen of the Act, waxing exceeding bold, employed the word "election," and implicitly justified all precedented steps towards the kingship according with the "customs of Samoa." I am not asking what was intended by the gentlemen who sat and debated very benignly and, on the whole, wisely in Berlin; I am asking what will be understood by a Samoan studying their literary work, the Berlin Act; I am asking what is the result of taking a word out of one state of society, and applying it to another, of which the writers know less than nothing, and no European knows much. Several interpreters and several days were employed last September in the fruitless attempt to convey to the mind of Laupepa the sense of the word "resignation." What can a Samoan gather from the words, _election_? _election of a king_? _election of a king according to the laws and customs of Samoa_? What are the electoral measures, what is the method of canvassing, likely to be employed by two, three, four, or five, more or less absolute princelings, eager to evince each other? And who is to distinguish such a process from the state of war? In such international--or, I should say, interparochial--differences, the nearest we can come towards understanding is to appreciate the cloud of ambiguity in which all parties grope-- "Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, Half flying."