prevailed over the English version, which provided for four times the
amount of damage done or the value destroyed, because it had "been
the practice of this court" and "we conform to
it
in this instance."
17
Five months later, the Supreme Court was asked again in the case of
Hardy v.
Ruggles
to decide whether the Hawaiian or English version of
a particular statute controlled. The English version required that all
documents filed with the Bureau of Conveyances were to be stamped
prior to filing. The Hawaiian version, however, had no such require-
ment. Chief Justice William L. Lee, writing for the Supreme Court,
4
THE HAWAIIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY
held that "where there is a radical and irreconcilable difference
between the English and Hawaiian, the latter must govern, because
it is the language of the legislators of the country. This doctrine was
first laid down by the Superior Court in 1848, and has been steadily
adhered to ever since." Chief Justice Lee further explained that "the
English and Hawaiian may often be used to help and explain each
other where the meaning is obscure, or the contradiction slight[.] "
18
The Supreme Court's legitimization of Hawaiian as the dominant lan-
guage, however, was short-lived. Three years after
Hardy
was decided,
"English-mainly" advocates lobbied the Hawaiian legislature to enact
a new law in 1859 which reversed Lee's decision by providing that
"[I] fat anytime a radical and irreconcilable difference shall be found
to exist between the English and Hawaiian versions of any part of this
Code,
the
English
version
shall
be
held binding"
(emphasis added).
19
In
a later decision, Chief Justice Albert
F.
Judd, writing for the Supreme
Court, attempted to reconcile any discrepancies in the translation
and interpretation of the dual laws by holding that "the two versions
constitute but one act. There is no dual legislation.
As
a rule, one ver-
sion is the translation of the other. The effort is always made to have
them exactly coincide, and the legal presumption is that they do."
20
Despite Judd's pronouncement, however, English remained the con-
trolling law in Hawai'i. Nonetheless, Hawai'i continued to publish its
laws in both Hawaiian and English
21
until
1943,
when the practice of
publishing laws in Hawaiian was abolished by statute.
22
Missionaries such as William Richards and Dr. Gerrit
P.
Judd, who
left missionary work to serve as official translator/interpreters for
King Kamehameha III, became proficient in both Hawaiian and
English and performed their government duties faithfully without
ever publicly advocating the use of one language to the exclusion of
the other.
23
However, not all missionaries who left mission work to
work for the Hawaiian government endorsed tolerance and diversity.
Richard Armstrong, a former missionary who served as the second
minister of public instruction for the kingdom of Hawai'i from 1848
until his death in i860, strongly supported the use of English in
Hawai'i's school system. Armstrong's "English-mainly" attitude is
reflected in his own writing:
Were the means at our command,
