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integrity of the American nation, and its treaty-making representatives, it would have been well to have awaited the delivery of this lecture, before retaining the services of Mr. Foster; because had he shown such a lamentable ignorance of my affairs as he did of those of Hawaii when he tried to speak of that country, her rulers, her people, even her situation geographically and socially, my case as a client would have suffered from his ignorance. Notwithstanding the historical truths, that although the gospel has been preached in Polynesia for a century or more, and that there is no other nation which has made such rapid progress in civilization and Christianity, yet Mr. Foster had the assurance to stand up in Washington, and revile all the native Hawaiian sovereigns. Not content with using bad language about my brother, King Kalakaua, and myself, he had to take up each one of the Kamehamehas, and refuse to them successively even one good quality, or to the Island people one redeeming characteristic.
This is only one of Mr. Foster’s blunders,—truly a serious one. Another blunder savors of the ridiculous; I did not see it, but it was described to me by those who did. It seems that his remarks were to be illustrated by lantern slides; and on opening this series of illustrations, there first appeared on the screen a dark form, which no one in the audience could recognize, yet the lecturer nothing daunted, with pole in hand, began to describe the situation of the Islands; then it suddenly occurred to him that the dots on the Pacific as shown by the slides were placed near enough over to annex, if not to the United States, then to Mexico; so