In the Society Islands, in consequence of the regal attribute inseparable from royalty of tabooing whatever ground it traversed, Tahitian kings became in course of time either entirely restricted to walking in their own domains, or subjected to the discomfort of a progress on servile shoulders over whatever district they wished to visit. So that tabu in both these instances acted as a limitation to the despotism of the king.
In Tahiti, however, the king’s power was further limited by a custom which, extending as it did to all the noble classes, was perhaps the most anomalous institution in the world, whether as regards the theory or the practice of inherited rank. For the custom compelling a king or a noble to transfer all his titles and dignity to his firstborn son at the moment of his birth, whether instituted originally for securing an undisputed succession to the regency or due to a similar rude confusion of ideas, such as associates the sanctity of a man’s origin with the sanctity of all he touches, carried the claims of primogeniture to a degree unknown either by the Jewish or the English law. ‘Whatever might be the age of the king, his influence in the state, or the political aspect of affairs in respect to other tribes, as soon as a son (of noble birth) was born, the monarch became a subject; the infant son was at once proclaimed sovereign of the people; the royal name was conferred upon him, and his father was the first to do him homage by saluting his feet and declaring him king.’ The national herald, sent round the island with the infant ruler’s flag, proclaimed his name in every district, and, if it were acknowledged by the aristocracy, edicts were thenceforth issued in his name. Not only the homage of his people, but the lands and other sources of his father’s power, were transferred to the minor child, the father only continuing to act as regent till his child’s capacity for government was matured.
The Fijians also have a peculiar custom, the institution of Vasu, which serves as a barrier both to regal and aristocratic oppression, and shows how, even among savages, the caprice of individuals is held in bondage by the traditions of the elders. Vasu signifies the common-law right of a nephew to appropriate to his own use anything he chooses belonging to an uncle or to anyone under his uncle’s power. The king often availed himself of Vasu for his own benefit, it being customary for a nephew to surrender as tribute most of the legal extortions which his title of Vasu might enable him to levy. But the king himself was liable to Vasu; for we are told that, ‘however high a chief may rank, however powerful a king may be, if he has a nephew he has a master;’ for, except his lands and his wives, neither chief nor king possessed anything which his nephew might not appropriate at any moment. If, for instance, the uncle built a canoe for himself, his nephew had only to come, mount the deck, and sound his trumpet shell, to announce to all the world a legitimate and indefeasible transfer of ownership. It is even said that on one occasion a nephew at war with his uncle actually supplied himself, unresisted, with ammunition from his enemy’s stores. It is difficult indeed to divine the origin of so singular an institution, unless perhaps we regard it as surviving from a time when as in so many parts of the world nephews and not sons ranked as first in inheritance. In Loango the nephews of a deceased king become princes, whilst his sons descend to the commonalty; the throne of Ashantee passes not to a man’s natural heir, but to his brother’s or sister’s son, and the same rule of descent prevails widely over the world.[212]
In two respects especially, savages may be accredited with having secured a certain stability for their institutions and saved them from some of the dangers which have been the bane of more civilised countries. It entitles them to no slight praise that they have generally so adjusted the relations of the temporal and spiritual powers as to prevent their clashing, and have taken its sting from taxation by making the day of taxpaying a day of public rejoicing. In the Tongan Islands (before the custom was abolished by a revolutionary king) the tax of the annual payment of firstfruits to the Tooitonga was almost forgotten in the grand ceremonies with which it was associated, and tributes received from inferiors by chiefs came as much as possible in the way of presents, whilst so far away as the Slave Coast, the feast of taxpaying is the great recurring Saturnalia of the year. In Dahomey income-tax is ‘paid under a polite disguise,’ each man bringing a present to the king in proportion to his rank, and at an annual festival.[213] The feast lasts a whole month; public plays take place every four or five days; singers chant the king’s praises and the historical traditions of the country; and the whole concludes with the ever popular African entertainment of human sacrifice, on an unlimited scale. In Fiji also taxpaying was associated with all that the people love; the time of its taking place being ‘a high day, a day for the best attire, the pleasantest looks, and the kindest words; a day for display.’ The Fijian carried his tribute with every demonstration of joyful excitement, paying it in with songs and dances to a king who received it with smiles and who provided a feast for the happy taxpayers. So among the Kaffirs the presence of the four royal[214] taxgatherers in the town was the signal for feasting and amusements, and when payment had been at last demanded by them they were conducted out of the town, as they had been welcomed into it, by dancers and musicians.[215]
In all the lower communities of the globe the priest, as the Shaman who can invoke rain, who can cause or cure diseases, who can detect the unknown thief, or read the result of a coming battle, may be revered for his power as a sorcerer, but he seldom enters into the scheme of the body politic as an efficient political force. In the Sandwich Islands, where priestly power was more developed than elsewhere, the priesthood, though not merely an hereditary body and possessed of much property in men and lands, but recipients of the same servile homage that was paid to the highest chiefs, occupied, nevertheless, a subordinate position to the governing class. As the nation retained a chief priest who had charge of the national god, so each chief retained his own family priest, whose function it was to follow him to the battle-field carrying his war-god and to direct the sacred rites of his house. In New Zealand the tohunga (or priest) was ‘not significative of a class separated from the rest by certain distinctions of rank,’ but was an office open to anyone.[216] In the Tongan Islands, a priest had no respect paid to him beyond what was due to his family rank, owing to the fact that the title to the priesthood was dependent on the accident of inspiration by some god. Whenever a priest invoked the gods (and it was generally on a person of the lower classes that such inspiration fell), the chiefs, nay, even the king himself, would sit indiscriminately with the common people in a circle round him, ‘on account of the sacredness of the occasion, conceiving that such modest demeanour must be acceptable to the gods.’[217] Whatever the priest then said was deemed a declaration of the god, and, in accordance with a confusion of the human voice and the divine, not unknown elsewhere, the oracle, in speaking, actually made use of the first person, as though the relation of himself to the god were not merely one of delegated authority, but of real and complete identification. Except, however, on such special occasions, a Tongan priest was distinguished by no particular dress, nor invested with any official privileges. In Fiji, also, the priests ranked below the principal chiefs; and the chief priest, though, as in Tahiti, it was his office to perform the ceremony which introduced the monarch to regal dignity, seems in nowise to have interfered afterwards with the sovereignty of his temporal lord. It is remarkable that the power of priestcraft increases with the increase of civilisation; ultimately serving to arrest and retard the growth of which it is at once a symptom and a measure.
If from the foregoing data, collected from the best accredited missionary sources, it is permissible to speak in general terms of primitive political life, it would appear that the social organisation of the lower races stands at a far higher level than too rapid an inspection would lead a critic to suspect. Their institutions are such as to presuppose as much ingenuity in their evolution as sagacity in their preservation. Their despotism is never so unlimited but that it recognises the existence of a customary code beside and above it; nor is individual liberty ever so unchecked as to outweigh the advantages or imperil the existence of a life in common. In short, the subordination of classes, the belief in the divine right of kings and in differences ordained by nature between nobles and populace, the principle of hereditary government (often so firmly fixed that not even women are excluded from the highest offices), the prevalence of feudalism with its ever-recurring wars and revolutions, not only prove an identity of social instinct which is irrespective of latitude or race, but prove also among the lower races the existence of a capacity for self-government, which is disturbing to all preconceptions derived from accounts of their manners and superstitions in other relations of life.
VI.
SAVAGE PENAL LAWS.
If, interpreting the present by the past, and taking as our standard of the past contemporary savage life, we endeavour to gain some insight into the origin of those legal customs and ideas which are so interwoven with our civilisation, the statements of travellers relating to the judicial institutions of savage tribes gain considerably in interest and value. For savage modes of redressing injuries, of assessing punishment, of discovering truth, reveal not a few striking points of resemblance and of contrast to the practices prevalent in civilised communities; whilst they serve at the same time to illustrate the natural laws at work in the evolution of society.