The Liberal, Volume I, Number 40, 28 Ianuali 1893 — WANTED,—STABILITY. [ARTICLE]

WANTED,—STABILITY.

The most pressing need of the times in Hawaii is a stable government. Stability is a blessing we have long lacked, and one which every earnest man should now direct his utmost efforts to obtain. It must be apparent to all save those who absolutely refuse to see and read the signs of the times, that the day has passed when we can reasonably hope for a stable and competent government under any of the forms heretofore in vogue. The Monarchy has been several times weighed in the balance, and has each time been found wanting in those qualities which alone can assure stability in the conduct of our government. There are others besides the beneficiaries of royaly who have rights in this matter. It is preposterous that a rotten and useless system should be perpetuated for no reasons of sound policy or public utility. The sentiment of aloha for the royal state is not a sufficient off-set to the many disadvantages to our meterial condition which would necessarily follow its restoration. The passions of the people have been so repeatedly and thoroughly aroused upon political matters, and the factional lines of sentiment now so rigidly drawn, as a consequence of the succession of disturbance from 1887 to the present, that we despair of any stable and peaceable solution of the impending difficulties except throught the medium of American annexation. An independent government for Hawaii, outside of the American Union, can hereafter rest only upon brute force, which is inconsistent with true personal and political liberty. While the prevailing force might to-day sustain one

system of one clique in place and power, a shifting of a comparatively small proportion of the popular sentiment, and of the force behind it, to the other side, might tomorrow hurl the former system to chaos, and its supporters to dungeons, only to be followed by counter movements later on, reversing existing conditions, transferring the captives to office and power, and the rulers to prison. Such see-sawing is fatal to material progress and prospects. We have had enough of that kind of history. Let us seek an alliance which will be an effectual guaranty against its recurrence. "I will have peace, though I have to fight for it," said the immortal Grant. That is our sentiment, as well.