36 ETHNOGRAPHY. 



group. There are certain persons to whom the title of aiki (or, more 

 commonly, liakaiki] is given, but it procures them no power or 

 influence beyond what they would otherwise possess. All that they 

 derive from this distinction consists in certain tokens of respect which 

 are paid to them, in accordance with the regulations of the tabu- 

 system. The rest of the people are landholders, or their relatives and 

 tenants. A general feeling of equality and personal independence 

 prevails, as in New Zealand. There is, however, this difference, that 

 the slave-class being for the most part wanting, the pride of superi- 

 ority is not felt. The Marquesans have all the ferocity and all the 

 free spirit of the New Zealanders, and are far more sensual and dis- 

 honest ; but the sullen hauteur which we find in the latter is very 

 rare among the former. They are, on the contrary, a frank, social, 

 light-hearted people, very agreeable in a brief intercourse, but with 

 few good qualities to attract on a longer intimacy. Besides the 

 hakaiki, there is usually, in every tribe, a toa, or chief warrior, whose 

 business it is to lead, or rather precede them to battle. But even 

 there his authority extends but little beyond the right of advising, and 

 every man fights or runs away according to his individual notions of 

 propriety. In the naval branch of their service the same democratic 

 principle prevails. Their war-canoes are large, and composed of a 

 number of pieces ; each piece frequently has its separate owner, 

 whose consent must be obtained before the whole can be put together. 

 In the Sandwich Islands, before the adoption of their present written 

 constitution, a peculiar form of government prevailed, differing from 

 the rest in the absence of a middle class of land-proprietors. All the 

 land in the group was the property of the king, and leased by him to 

 inferior chiefs (hatu-aina, literally "landlords"), who underlet it to 

 the people. As the king, however, though absolute in theory, was 

 aware that his power depended very much on the co-operation of the 

 high chiefs, they became, to a certain degree, partakers in his autho- 

 rity. The power thus lodged in the hands of the king and chiefs was 

 as despotic as could well be imagined. Any man, from the heads of 

 districts to the lowest of the people, might, at a word, be stripped of 

 all his possessions, and driven out a houseless wanderer. The conse- 

 quence was, a degree of oppression to which nothing similar was 

 known in any other part of Polynesia. It was a grinding tyranny, 

 by which every morsel of food, beyond what was necessary for the 

 existence of the labourer, was wrung from him to support the chiefs 

 and their numerous attendants in a life of idleness and profusion. In 



