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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: knowledge of the white resident who was at that time playing the
part of intermediary with Malie; and he, in natural anger and
disgust, withdrew from the negotiation. These duplicities, always
deplorable when discovered, are never more fatal than with men
imperfectly civilised. Almost incapable of truth themselves, they
cherish a particular score of the same fault in whites. And
Mataafa is besides an exceptional native. I would scarce dare say
of any Samoan that he is truthful, though I seem to have
encountered the phenomenon; but I must say of Mataafa that he seems
distinctly and consistently averse to lying.
For the affair of the Manono prisoners, the chief justice is only
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