was in him, subject to taxes and revenue for himself as well as for the expenses of government, all of which went into the same pocket, if he had one. The need of some record of the lands of his kingdom, and of its subdivisions, was pointed out to him; as also, a record of the occupiers of these lands (Estate of His Majesty Kamehameha IV., 2 Hawaiian Reports 715; W. D. Alexander in "Thrum's Annual" cited above).

Accordingly, in 1846 a commission was established by Kamehameha III. to quiet the land titles of the islands. This board of five commissioners was established for the investigation and final ascertainment, or rejection, of all claims of private individuals to any landed property acquired prior to the act, 1846 (1 Statutes of Hawaii, p. 107). All claims were forever barred unless presented to this board by February 14, 1848, and the land of the ahupuaa reverted to the government, or of the kul eana in the ahupuaa, or ili, to the holder of that body of land. The award of the commission was final unless appealed from. Its existence was limited, and it proceeded with great industry to the enormous task before it of settling the 12,000 land claims on the eight islands, which it completed in 1855.

It established an elaborate set of principles in its adjudication of claims presented to it. The nature of Hawaiian ten. ure of land and the history of its development, which I have merely outlined, is accurately stated in Statutes of Hawaii, Vol. II., p. 81, 1846.

The holders of the ahupuaas and ilis were very anxious to free their lands from all other claims, and willingly gave up one-third of their lands in return for an allodial title to the remainder, thus indicating the good sense of the aristocracy.

Of course it was impossible for the holders of the ahupuaas and ilis to determine the area of their lands until the scattered kuleanas within them were determined. This was necessarily done hastily, and few competent surveyors were to be had. C. J. Lyons, in his articles in the Islander of 1875, gives an interesting narrative of the methods employed from personal knowledge as an expert surveyor. The distances were sometimes measured by fifty-feet chains and the direction established by a pocket compass, or in one case, in Land Commission's Award 17, Royal Patent 130 to E. Jones in Honolulu, the bounds were read off from a mariner's compass. Any natural feature, however ephemeral, was noted-as guava trees, as frail as willow trees in New England. The description might be as follows: Beginning at a guava tree on the N. E. corner of this land and

running N. W. half W. per mariner's compass 1 chain 55 ft. to the S. corner of the pen of the missionary cow, near Kawaiaha; thence along back of same N. E. about 1 chain 3 feet to a hala tree marked X; thence S. E. by E. one-fourth E. about 92 feet, etc.

The direction, whether magnetic or true meridian, is often omitted, and the local variation which is great near great lava flows, is seldom noted. Several methods are sometimes noted in one survey. The same surveyor did not take a whole district, but each worked out his own plans independently of all other surveys, as at Waikiki, where the overlapping and failure to join is a fruitful source of litigation to-day.

With this inaccuracy the difficulty of the owners of ahupuaas may be imagined. The problem that faced them was like answering the question, What is the area of the white on the ten-spot-of-spades without knowing the area of the spades? Add to this the fact that a smaller eight-of-clubs might be placed on top of the larger card, and the problem of the holder of the ili inside the ahupuaa may be imagined.

The result was that the land commission was empowered to grant titles to konohikis, or agents of chiefs, for whole "ahupuaas or ilis received by them in Mahele of 1848 by their proper names without survey. These names were such as Kealakekua (the paths of the gods); Kauhako (the bowels that were dragged).

This leads us to a most remarkable peaceful revolution in the land tenure of Hawaii by which the embarrassment of land titles was relieved and all titles became allodial.

The award of the L. C. A., as it is called for short, gave the holder a right to pay one-third of the value of the land, as a commutation of the government interest in the tenant's land. The chiefs still held their larger claims from the king, and were anxious to secure an allodial title. After a historic debate of the king and chiefs in Privy Council in December, 1847, the chiefs decide to surrender to the king the greater part of the lands held in fief by them, in return for an allodium in the remainder, but that was accomplished by two steps. The first step was the great mahele, or division by which a committee arranged by mutual consent of the king and each chief, a settlement that was to be final. The landlords were to receive one-third of the lands held by them, as their share. The record of this division was kept in the Mahele Book, the Hawaiian Domesday Book, which consists of lists of lands by name belonging to the king, and chiefs to which mutual quitclaim deeds are

subjoined by which the king released all his feudal rights in the chiefs' lands (see the learned opinion of Hon. A. F. Judd, now Chief-Justice (Yale '62), in Harris v. Carter, 6 Haw. 198). The allodium was not even then in either the king or the chiefs.

The chiefs were required to present their claims to the Land Commission for award, upon which they might secure an allodial title to their lands in a Royal Patent, upon paying a commutation to the Government for its interest in the lands (Kanoa v. Meek, 6 H. 63). At the close of the mahele, or division, the lands of the king reserved to himself to which the landlords or chiefs had quitclaim, were not regarded by him as his private property. "Even before his division with the landlords, a second division between himself and the government or state was clearly contemplated" (Estate of His Majesty Kamehameha IV., 2 Haw. 722). The king seems to have realized the value of separating his private property from that property held by him as the representative of the state, and to have appreciated the danger of confiscation of public lands, including his own, in case of conquest by a foreign power. He also appreciated the value of complete control over his own property. Impelled by these motives, and apparently by a broad view of the interests of his kingdom, in 1848 he set apart for the use of the government the larger part of his royal domain, afterwards known as government land, and reserved to himself a reasonable amount, as his own estate, known since as crown lands. These deeds are both contained in the Domesday Book of Hawaii, called the Mahele Book, or Book of Division.

In 1850 the chiefs followed the example of their king, and gave up a third of their lands to the government which was accepted by the Privy Council August 26, 1850, as full computation of the Government right in the remainder of their lands; thus the chiefs obtain an allodial title.

The grants of the ahupuaas and ili expressly reserve the rights of tenants, "koe na kuleana o kanaka." In 1862, a boundary commission settled the limits of those ahupuaas and iis, awarded by name.

The common people were guaranteed the right to water and the right of way over the lands of their chiefs, or konohikis. The same act of August 6, 1850, confirms the resolution of the Privy Council on December 21, 1849, granting a fee simple title, free of all commutation to all native tenants for their cultivated lands and house lots, except town lots in Honolulu, Lahaina and Hilo (W. D. Alexander in "Thrum's Annual," 1891, p. 115).

Thus three classes of the kingdom obtain allodial titles, since which time the government has been industriously locating and mapping the lands of Hawaii, and bringing order out of chaos under the able supervision of W. D. Alexander, Yale '55, Surveyor General. The government maps of ahupuaas, locating kuleanas look like crazy quilts, but still the greater lands are now approximately correct in their calculation of areas.

Now and again, a blind or deaf old kamaaina (oldest inhabitant) is hunted out of his grass hut or cabin, and placed on the witness stand to locate a doubtful kuleana. He is urged to tell the court where the pig pen used to be, or the guava tree, since succeeded by a jungle of others; where the missionary cow had her pen, or the ever-changing bank of the stream its ancient line. In the desire to please, he may answer, "It was just where you would like to have it, judge," and the court does the best it can to locate that particular spot on the ten-of-spades, and the occupants of others sigh for the twenty years of adverse possession to settle their pilikia.

HONOLULU, H. I.

Philip L. Weaver.

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THE United States constitute a sort of laboratory of large and small democracies, political and municipal, in which it not only possible to try a good many valuable experiments but almost impossible not to try them. And there is hardly a problem in the organization of state or municipal government the solution of which has not been tried under conditions which make the experiment useful and memorable. It is thus with no little interest that the country watches the use of the referendum in California. That State is just now making an extremely interesting experiment in government, and one that promises to work very well. It is nothing less than dispensing with a constitution in the old sense and substituting two classes of lawsone of more importance and authority, adopted by the people; and the other of less, enacted by the legislature. This results from the fact that the new constitution, adopted in 1879, was really, as has so often been pointed out, not a constitution but a code of laws, regulating with minute detail many of the affairs of life. And as soon as the new government set to work under this constitution so soon the elaborate rules began to hinder it. The courts found many of the rules unconstitutional and relieved the Legislature of them. But nevertheless something more had to be done, and the only way to do it was by amending the constitution. This change required a majority vote of the people. So the people glided into the easy path of constitutional amendment and use of the referendum.

Since the present constitution was passed there have been introduced into the Legislature four hundred and eighty-six