Hawaii - James Michener [387]
At this juncture Micah Hale saved Hawaii, and he was well prepared for his role. Years before in Lahaina his missionary father had kept him penned up in a walled garden where he had done nothing but study history, the Bible and his father's fierce sense of rectitude. Particularly, he had served two apprenticeships which now fortified him in the job of building a new government: he had watched his father translate the book of Ezekiel, so that the stern phrases of that obdurate prophet lived in his mind; and he had listened when his lame little father explained how John Calvin and Theodore Beza had governed Geneva in accordance with the will of God.
The first thing Micah Hale did was to deprive Wild Whip Hoxworth of any connection with the government. Next he insisted upon moral laws and fiscal responsibility. But above all, like a true missionary, he wrote. For the newspapers he wrote justifications of his government. For magazines he explained why the Hawaii revolution, which he had not wanted, was similar to the uprisings that had brought William and Mary to 'the English throne. To Republican senators he wrote voluminously, providing them with ammunition to be fired against the Democrats, and to long-forgotten friends across America he wrote inspired letters, begging them to accept Hawaii. He lived solely for the purpose of making his islands part of the United States, and his pen, as it pushed across paper in the quiet hours after midnight, was the only real weapon the islanders had left.
It was not a liberal government that Micah founded. When the wealthy men who were to draw up a new constitution met, he lectured: "Your job is to build a Christian state in which only responsible men of good reputation and solid ownership of property are allowed to govern." Explicit property qualifications were set for all who served and all who voted to have them serve. No man could be a member of the senate who did not own $3,000 worth of property untouched by mortgages, or who did not possess a yearly income of $1,200. In order to vote for a senator, a man was required to own $3,000 worth of property or to have an income of $600. Explained Micah: "In other parts of the world the uneducated workingman raises his voice in anger against his superiors, but not in Hawaii." Wherever possible, advantages were given to plantation owners, for upon them rested the welfare of the islands.
On one point Micah was adamant: no Oriental must be allowed to vote or to participate in the government in any way. "They were brought to these islands to labor in the cane fields, and when their work was done they were supposed to go back home. There was no intention that they stay here, and if they do so, there is no place in our public life for them." Therefore, at Micah's suggestion, cleverly worded literacy tests were required for suffrage, and no Chinese or Japanese, even if he were wealthy and a citizen, could possibly pass them.
In many respects Micah's government was too liberal for the sugar men who had thrown it into power, and there were many Hales and Whipples and Hewletts among the missionary group who opposed his radical liberalism, while the Janderses and Hoxworths considered him insane with French republican principles; for once the electorate had been restricted to the well-to-do. Micah was lenient and just in all other matters. He insisted upon trial by jury, the rights of habeas corpus, freedom of religion and all the appurtenances of an Anglo-Saxon democracy. But when in the later stages of the constitutional convention he was asked, "What kind of government are you building here?" he replied quickly, "One that will mark time decently until the United States accepts us."
From this great basic principle he never wavered. A lesser man than Micah might have been tempted by his power, but this austere New Englander was not. He awarded