[A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson]@TWC D-Link book
A Footnote to History

CHAPTER IV--BRANDEIS
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The more I learn of his brief term of rule, the more I learn to admire him, and to wish we had his like.
In the face of bitter native opposition, he got some roads accomplished.
He set up beacons.

The taxes he enforced with necessary vigour.

By the 6th of January, Aua and Fangatonga, districts in Tutuila, having made a difficulty, Brandeis is down at the island in a schooner, with the _Adler_ at his heels, seizes the chief Maunga, fines the recalcitrant districts in three hundred dollars for expenses, and orders all to be in by April 20th, which if it is not, "not one thing will be done," he proclaimed, "but war declared against you, and the principal chiefs taken to a distant island." He forbade mortgages of copra, a frequent source of trickery and quarrel; and to clear off those already contracted, passed a severe but salutary law.

Each individual or family was first to pay off its own obligation; that settled, the free man was to pay for the indebted village, the free village for the indebted province, and one island for another.

Samoa, he declared, should be free of debt within a year.


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