vent them from acquiring the native language. They went even farther at the Sandwich Islands; where, a few years ago, a play-ground for the children of the missionaries was inclosed with a fence many feet high, the more effectually to exclude the wicked little Hawaiians. And yet, strange as it may seem, the depravity among the Polynesians, which renders precautions like these necessary, was a measure unknown before their intercourse with the whites. The excellent Captain Wilson, who took the first missionaries out to Tahiti, affirms, that the people of that island had, in many things, more refined ideas of decency than ourselves.'* Vancouver, also, has some note-worthy ideas on this subject, respecting the Sandwich Islanders."+

Our author adds:

"That the immorality alluded to is continually increasing, is plainly shown in the numerous, severe, and perpetually violated laws against licentiousness of all kinds, in both groups of islands."+

A necessary consequence of this deplorable state of things, is the dwindling away of the native population under the influence of the civilization introduced by the missionaries. The Tahitian population, like that of all the other islands of the Pacific upon which the missionaries have set their foot, is fast verging to extinction. It is melting away, like the snow before the rays of the sun. If the decrease should go on with the same rapidity as heretofore, for a few years longer, the missionaries will soon have but few even of nominal converts to boast of in all those islands, of whose civilization they have nevertheless been in the habit of speaking in terms so grandiloquent.

“About the year 1777, Captain Cook estimated the population of Tahiti at about two hundred thousand. By a regular census, taken some four or five years ago, it was found to be only NINE THOUSAND! This amazing decrease not

* A Missionary Voyage to the South Pacific Ocean. Append. pp. 336-342.

+ Vancouver's Voyages, 4th edit. vol. i, p. 172, Jbid. quoted in "Omoo," p. 235.

§ In a note, the author here refers to the volumes of the "U. States Exploring Expedition;" which also bears abundant testimony to the same remarkable fact in regard to the Sandwich Islands. He also quotes Ruschenberger's "Voyage round the World."-Philadelphia, 1838.-8vo.

only shows the malignancy of the evils necessary to produce it; but, from the fact the inference unavoidably follows, that all the wars, child-murders, and other depopulating causes, alleged to have existed in former times, were nothing in comparison to them."*

In view of these mournful facts, the extinction of the native race is inevitable. Their fate is fixed, and no human power can avert it.

"The islanders themselves are mournfully watching their doom. Several years since, Pomaree II said to Tyreman and Bennet, the deputies of the London Missionary Society, You have come to see me at a very bad time. Your ancestors came in the time of men, when Tahiti was inhabited; you are come to behold just the remnant of my people.' Of like import, was the prediction of Teearmoar, the high-priest of Paree, who lived over a hundred years ago. I have frequently heard it chanted in a low, sad tone, by aged Tahitians:

A harree ta fow,
A toro ta farraro,

A now ta tararta.'

The palm-tree shall grow,
The coral shall spread;

But MAN shall cease.'"t

Such is then, from unquestionable evidence, the sad and deplorable condition to which the Tahitians have been reduced under the teaching of the Protestant missionaries. After having labored to bestow upon the natives the blessings of Christian civilization, for a period of nearly sixty years; after having expended millions of money for their conversion to Christianity; after having boasted a thousand times of their brilliant success "in evangelizing the heathen," and thereby succeeded in extorting immense amounts from the credulity of their confiding friends in England; the whole mission turns out to be, not only a complete and signal failure, but a disgrace and a burning shame to the Christian name. The Tahitians are now infinitely worse off,-physically and morally, than they were before they saw the face of the godly missionaries. They * Vancouver's Voyages, quoted in "Omoo," "Omoo," p. 241.

p. 239.

have been mocked with the vision of civilization which they were destined never to realize. The missionaries have grown rich at the expense of their boasted converts. The latter have become the victims of the trust they reposed in the professions of the former. They were promised every thing, and, in the end, received nothing. Poverty, degradation, extinction-were their unfortunate lot and doom. They were left nothing else to hope for.

How are we to explain this singular phenomenon? Are we to say, that the missionaries were nothing but arrant hypocrites and impostors? We would not take upon ourselves the responsibility of making such a charge. We may even believe that most of them were upright and honest men, who sincerely wished to convert and civilize the natives. Many of them certainly labored with great apparent zeal and earnestness. Whence, then, their notorious failure? It can be explained only on the principle which all ecclesiastical history proclaims as true and certain,—that no sect, separated from Catholic unity, has ever succeeded, or can ever succeed, in converting and civilizing a single heathen nation. God does not bless the efforts of proud separatists; he gives his graces only to the meek and humble laborer in his own vineyard: and his divine Son has accordingly said, "he that gathereth not with me, scattereth."

It is only the pure and immaculate spouse of Christ-the Catholic churchthat can be the fruitful mother of his children. Protestantism, like all other human sects, is necessarily doomed to barrenness. "Unless God build the house, in vain do they labor who build it." The failure of the Tahitian mission, is but an additional link in the long chain of reasoning which clearly establishes the falsity of Protestantism and the truth of Catholicity. View the subject in what light you will, this is the conclusion which every logical Christian mind must necessarily reach on the subject. The Protestant sects have always

and every where signally failed in their missionary enterprises; therefore they cannot claim to have the blessing of God; therefore, they are not the heirs to the promises made by Christ to his first ministers in the commission which he gave them to teach all nations.

But

This is, we have not the slightest doubt, the principal cause of the total failure of Protestant missionary effort in the islands of the Pacific, and the world over. there are other causes of a secondary nature, connected with the mode employed by the missionaries for operating on the minds of the natives. They relied entirely too much on mere worldly means; and too little on the assistance of God. They hoped to convert the natives to Christianity by distributing among them Bibles and tracts; a means neither warranted by the Scriptures themselves, nor conformable to the teachings of reason and experience. They also placed too much confidence in those exciting exhibitions of fanaticism, generally known by the name of "revivals." These may carry away the multitude for the moment, but they usually produce no permanent results. When the excitement dies away, the converts made under its influence also usually fall off; and often become worse sinners than they were before. We will, while on this subject, give another extract from "Omoo."

"In fact, there is, perhaps, no race upon earth less disposed by nature to the monitions of Christianity, than the people of the South Sea. And this assertion is made with full knowledge of what is called the Great Revival at the Sandwich Islands,' about the year 1836; when several thousands were, in the course of a few weeks, admitted into the bosom of the church. But this result was brought about by no sober moral convictions; as an almost instantaneous relapse into every kind of licentiousness, soon afterwards testified. It was the legitimate effect of a morbid feeling, engendered by the sense of severe physical wants, preying upon minds excessively prone to superstition; and, by fanatical preaching, inflamed into the belief that the gods of the missiona

9

ries were taking vengeance on the wickedness of the land."*

So very difficult was it, in fact, for the Protestant missionaries of Tahiti to retain the converts which they had made, that, like their American brethren at the Sandwich Islands, they felt themselves under the necessity of enacting a regular code of what we would call Blue Laws; and of enforcing them by means of a sort of inquisition, the officers of which were a set of spies, who traversed the island, and reported all scandals to their employers. These men, called by the natives kannakippers, are feared and detested by the whole Tahitian population. They are very troublesome fellows, who constitute a regular religious police under the direction of the missionaries; and wo to the unfortunate native who is denounced by them. Mr. Melville devotes a separate chapter to their special benefit; and it would be a very amusing one, if the subject were not so sad a commentary on the boasted right of private judgment. We can make room for but one or two extracts. Speaking of the hypocrisy, which this system of religious espionage and coercion is calculated to foster, Mr. Melville says:

"The hypocrisy in matters of religion, so apparent in all Polynesian converts, is most injudiciously nourished in Tahiti, by a zealous, and in many cases, a coercive superintendence over their spiritual well-being. But it is only manifested with respect to the common people, their superiors being exempted. On Sunday mornings, when the prospect is rather small for a full house in the minor churches, a parcel of fellows are actually sent out with rattans into the high-ways and byways as whippers-in of the congregation. This is a sober fact. These worthies constitute a religious police; and you always know them by the great white diapers they wear. On week days they are quite as busy as on Sundays; to the great terror of the inhabitants, going all over the island, and spying out the wickedness thereof. Moreover, they are the collectors

* P. 218.

Kotzebue testifies to this same curious fact; and so also does the Quaker Wheeler.

of fines-levied generally in grass matsfor obstinate non-attendance upon divine worship, and other offences amenable to the ecclesiastical judicature of the missionaries."*

Of these precious religious spies he also says:

"Besides their confounded inquisitiveness, they add insult to injury, by making a point of dining out every day at some hut within the limits of their jurisdiction. As for the gentleman of the house, his meek endurance of these things is amazing. But, good easy man, there is nothing for him but to be as hospitable as possible. These gentry are indefatigable. At the dead of night prowling round the houses, and in the day-time hunting amorous couples in the groves."+

We will close this paper with one more extract from our author, in which he furnishes us with the substance of a discourse preached to the natives by one of the missionaries in his presence, as interpreted to him by an intelligent Hawaiian sailor, whose acquaintance he had casually made. The sermon was delivered shortly after the French had taken possession of the island under Admiral de Petit Thouars. It opens with a violent invective against the French and a gross slander of the Catholic religion; and it closes with an earnest appeal to the audience for some of the good things of this earth. We have heard of some Protestant preachers nearer home, who adopt the same train of reasoning. We give the beginning and the end of the discourse.

"Good friends, I glad to see you; and I very well like to have some discourse with you to-day. Good friends, very bad times in Tahiti; it make me weep. Pomareef is gone—the island no more yours, but the We-Wees (French). Wicked priests here, too; and wicked idols in women's clothes, and brass chains. Good friends, no you speak, or look at thembut I know you won't-they belong to a set of robbers-the wicked We-Wees. Soon these bad men be made to go very * P. 223.

† P. 224

The French came to avenge the persecutions inflicted on French priests and their Catholic converts at the instigation of the missionaries; as Mr. Melville acknowledges, pp. 157-8.

§ The queen, who had fled to a neighboring island-one of the group.