Important matters are debated in a fono, or native parliament, with its feasting and parade, its endless speeches and polite genealogical allusions.
Debated, I say--not decided; for even a small minority will often strike a clan or a province impotent.

In the midst of these ineffective councils the chief sits usually silent: a kind of a gagged audience for village orators.

And the deliverance of the fono seems (for the moment) to be final.

The absolute chiefs of Tahiti and Hawaii were addressed as plain John and Thomas; the chiefs of Samoa are surfeited with lip-honour, but the seat and extent of their actual authority is hard to find.
It is so in the members of the state, and worse in the belly.

The idea of a sovereign pervades the air; the name we have; the thing we are not so sure of.