OUR FOREIGN POSSESSIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIV, Issue 187, 9 August 1893, Page 8

OUR FOREIGN POSSESSIONS.

THE JHERVEY ISLANDS,

What Mr F. J. Moss is Doi> to.

The little cluster of islands in our neighbourhood known as the Cock or Hervey Group has just attained considerable prominence from being the subject of an interesting discussion in bhe House of Lords. Ab among bbc mosb recenb additions to the Empire on which the sun never sets, bhese" islets, 'seb in ditbering seas,' are inberesting; but more so to us- in the fact that under the hegemony of New Zealand they enter into our colonial system, and will yet no dcubt form an integral part of the Anglo-Saxon Confederation in these seas. The peculiarity of bheir existing relations, ia a dependency oi a dependency, and even more, the peculiarity of their domestic instibutions, make thema subjecb of study, tor nowhere else in the Empire, io these matter-of-fact and fin-de-siecle days, do we find such a system of theocracy surviving conbucb with modern instibutions. The name of bhe principal island in the group —Rarobonga—recalls the memory _of the honoured and eminent missionary Williams, and for some seventy years the islanders have been under the-influence of Christianity. Isolated as they are, though not remote, they have afforded a field for the undisturbed development of ecclesiastical administration j and being brought suddenly, face to face with the developments of modern instibutions they present us with some quaint bypes of social and political economy. Over thirty years ago bho islanders, chiefs and people prayed bo be taken under the protectorate of England—aba time when, if English statesmen Lad been alive to the importance of future British interests, the greaser part of the Pacific might bave imperceptibly passed under the British flag. Ab ditferenb bin.es since bhen the same requesb has been presented, and ib was only some five years ago, when the New Zealand Government, offering to _ assume Imperial responsibilities, assisted in pressing the claim, that the" group was 'protected,' or virtually annexed bo the Empire. A British Resident, Mr Moss, nominated and paid by New Zealand, and formally appointed by the Imperial Government, was* placed in the group, and it is his interesbing reporb on the islanders and their ways, with the effort of Lord Onslow, late Governor of New Zealand, to have bhe administrative responsibility of the group formally taken ovor by' the Imperial Government, that has brought up this litsle picture of medievalism into the glare ot modern life. <

To say that ecclesiastical ascendency prevails does nob fully express the sibuabion, The possession of church membership appear to be the be-all in the enjoyment of civil rights. From the King on the throne, or, rather, Queen—for the rights of the Bex aro paramounb—bo bhe hnmblesb policemen—of whom there is one for every twelve grown-up inhabitantschurch membership is the first and indispensable qualification. Should it be lost by any moral lapse, all the trappings of authority and honor are ruthlessly stripped off, and the excommunicated person is nob merely subjected to spiritual terrors, hut is boycotted as to his food and clothing. If deprived ot the comforts of religious ordinances, life is not only not worth living to a man in the Hervey Islands, bub is not livable ab all, and religion there has a vory tangible value. The belief in sorcery, from which our forefathers had hardly emerged before missionaries broughb the light to the Hervey Group, survives with all its terrors, and one that deab with demons or tampers with the black art has a warm time of it with the Church and State in that-little corner of the Empire. As might beexpecbed, the supremacy of the religious power causes no distinction between spiritual and temporal offences, and a man who pays a visit of a Sunday to a strange village 13 fined to an amount bhat to an islander must mean beggary for a good part of the rest of his life. The penal code also takes cognizance of matters thab elsewhere under tho flag of England are rather leniently dealt with. . For example, if a man in the gloaming puts bis arm around, a woman's waist he is mulcted in ten dollars for tho crime, though if he have a torch in his other . hand he goes free. If he even indulges a sympathetic nature to the extent of woeping for the death of a woman nob a relative, bo'musb pay fifteen dollars as a fine; and as all these fines are'divided among bho policemen—of whom, as we have said, there is ono for every dozen of the adult inhabitants—it is unnecessary to say that tho laws are very efficiently enforced. When to this vigorous penal code there are added various forma of torture for the extraction of evidence, we have in theso littlo islands,, almost within hail of our shores, a system of law and government presented that, to say tho least, ia nob very consonant with the spirit ot British institu-

tioias. • Ib ia with this condition of things that the resident, Mr Moss, has been wrestling for the past few years, and ib is to strengthen, his hands with the moral support of his being a direct'representative of British authority thab Lord Onslow made an appeal bo the Imperial Governmenb, The request was that the administration of the protectorate might be taken over by England, go bhab wibh her powers, and capable, if need be, of calling in the aid of a British man-of-war, the Resident mighb exercise more moral aa well as official influence in regulating bhe alfairs of the group. With the limited powers in his hands—in fact, in large part by moral influence alone—bhe Resident has effecbed quibe a transformation in the political and administrative system of tho islands. In the four larger divisions "he has established forms of Home Rule, wibh a Federal Parliament embracing representatives, regularly elecbed on a liberal franchise, from all '"parts of the group, and be has had ..Widerable success in separating the civil and spiritual jurisdictions, framing a new code of laws and. generally layiug the basis of a constitutional system of governmenb. The experiment is an interesting one in itself, and has drawn from bhe Secretary of State for the colonies and hia predecessor the highest encomiums to the Resident for his successful ei&rts. Indeor), it i 3 bhe success of those efforts that seems to have mainly contributed to the Imperial Governments refusing to take over the responsibility. And ib ought to be accepted as complimentary to these colonies, in thiß case as in the case of Now Guinea, thab they are thus invited to exorcise in a sense the functions of sovereignty in administering the governmenb of dependent States.—' Sydney Morning Herald.'