His Victories Are Celebrated In Countless Meles Or Unwritten Songs, Which Are Said To Be Marked By Real Poetic Feeling And Simplicity, And To Resemble The Ossianic Poems In Majesty And Melancholy.

He founded the dynasty which for seventy years has stood as firmly, and exercised its functions for the welfare of the people on the whole as efficiently, as any other government.

The king was forty-five years old when, having "no more worlds to conquer," he devoted himself to the consolidation of his kingdom. He placed governors on each island, directly responsible to himself, who nominated chiefs of districts, heads of villages, and all petty officers; and tax-gatherers, who, for lack of the art of writing, kept their accounts by a method in use in the English exchequer in ancient times. He appointed a council of chiefs, with whom he advised on important matters, and a council of "wise men" who assisted him in framing laws, and in regulating concerns of minor importance. In all matters of national importance, the governors and high chiefs of the islands met with the sovereign in consultations. These were conducted with great privacy, and the results were promulgated through the islands by heralds whose office was hereditary.

Kamehameha enacted statutes against theft, murder, and oppression, and though he wielded oppressive and despotic authority himself, his people enjoyed a golden age as compared with those that were past. The king, governors, and chiefs constituted the magistracy, and there was an appeal from both chiefs and governors to the king. It was usual for both parties to be heard face to face in the enclosure in front of the house of the king or governor, no lawyers were employed, and every man advocated his own cause, sitting cross- legged before the judges. Swiftness and decision characterized the redress of grievances and the administration of justice. Kamehameha reduced the feudal tenure of land, which had heretofore been the theory, into absolute practice, claiming for the crown the sole ownership of the land, and dividing it among his followers on the conditions of tribute and military service. The common people were attached to the soil and transferred with it. A chief might nominate his wife, or son, or any other person to succeed him in his possessions, but at his death they reverted to the king, whose order was required before the testamentary wish became of any value. There were some wise regulations generally applicable, concerning the planting of cocoanut trees, and a law that the water should be conducted over every plantation twice a week in general, and once a week during the dry season. This king constructed immense fish- ponds on the sea coast, and devoted himself to commerce with such success that in one year he exported $400,000 of sandalwood (felled and shipped at the cost of much suffering to the common people), and on finding that a large proportion of the profit had been dissipated by harbour dues at Canton, he took up the idea and established harbour dues at Honolulu.

From Vancouver Kamehameha learned of the grandeur and power of Christian nations; and in the idea that his people might grow great through Christianity, he asked him, in 1794, that Christian teachers might be sent from England. This request, if ever presented, was disregarded, as was another made by Captain Turnbull in 1803, and this exceptionally great Polynesian died the year before the light of the Gospel shone on Hawaiian shores.

Some persons, it does not appear whether they were English or American, attempted his conversion; but the astute savage, after listening to their eloquent statements of the power of faith, pressed on them as a crucial test to throw themselves from the top of an adjacent precipice, making his reception of their religion contingent on their arrival unhurt at its base. He built large heiaus, amongst others the one at Kawaihae, at the dedication of which to his favourite war god eleven human sacrifices were offered. To the end he remained devoted to the state religion, and the last instances of capital punishment for breaking tabu, a thraldom deeply interwoven with the religious system, occurred in the last year of his reign, when one man was put to death for putting on a chief's girdle, another for eating of a tabooed dish, and a third for leaving a house under tabu, and entering one which was not so.

His last prayers were to his great red-feathered god Kukailimoku, and priests bringing idols crowded round him in his dying agony. His last words were "Move on in my good way and" - In the death- room the high chiefs consulted, and one, to testify his great grief, proposed to eat the body raw, but was overruled by the majority. So the flesh was separated from the bones, and they were tied up in tapa, and concealed so effectually that they have never since been found. A holocaust of three hundred dogs gave splendour to his obsequies. "These are our gods whom I worship," he had said to Kotzebue, while showing him one of the temples. "Whether I do right or wrong I do not know, but I follow my faith, which cannot be wicked, as it commands me never to do wrong."

Kamehameha the Great died in 1819, and his son Liholiho, who loved whisky and pleasure, was peaceably crowned king in his room, and by his name. He, with the powerful aid of the Queen Dowager Kaahumanu, abolished tabu, and his subjects cast away their idols, and fell into indifferent scepticism, the high priest Hewahewa being the first to light the iconoclastic torch, having previously given his opinion that there was only one great akua or spirit in lani, the heavens. This Kamehameha II. was the king who with his queen, died of measles in London in 1824, after which the Blonde frigate was sent to restore their bodies with much ceremony to Hawaiian soil.

Kamehameha III., a minor, another son of the Conqueror, succeeded, and reigned for thirty years, dividing the lands among the nobles and the people, and conferring upon his kingdom an equable constitution.

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