SANDWICH ISLANDS. 
155 
presented to Karaimoku and the other chiefs a paper con¬ 
taining a few hints concerning their affairs, which he wished 
them to look over at their leisure, and if they approved of 
them, to adopt them as their own, but not as the dictates of 
the British government, which had no wish whatever to 
interfere with the regulations of the chiefs, who must be 
the best judges of what suited the people. 
A conversation then ensued among the chiefs on the 
subject of the missionaries, and Lord Byron was asked if 
the King of England had any objection to the settling of 
the American mission in the Islands, and instructing the 
people. His lordship said, that he had heard that the 
missionaries had an intention of drawing up a code of laws 
for the people, and to this he decidedly objected; but, so 
long as these gentlemen did not interfere with the laws 
or commerce of the country, he could not object to their 
instructing the natives in reading, and in the Christian 
religion. 
Mr. Bingham, in behalf of the mission, stated, that the 
American missionaries had neither the design nor the wish 
to interfere with the political or commercial concerns of the 
nation ; being expressly prohibited by their commission, and 
their public and private instructions from their patrons, 
from any such interference. That they act under the Ame- 
