Adultery was sometimes punished with death, but not under the public law. It was optional with the husband to pursue the criminal, or content himself with procuring another wife. A strange state of manners is exhibited by the account we have of the early missionaries arriving in Tahiti. The King Pomare came down to meet them with his wife Idia. This woman, though married to the prince, remaining on friendly terms with him, offering him advice, and influencing his actions by her counsel, was then cohabiting with one of her own servants, who had for some time been her paramour. The King, meanwhile, had taken his wife’s youngest sister as a concubine; but she had deserted him for a more youthful lover, whereupon he contented himself with a girl belonging to the poorer class. Women, indeed, and men of the royal blood, were above the law.
Abandoned wives, and girls who could find no husbands, usually became prostitutes, as distinguished from those who pursued a profligate life from sheer sensuality. They hired themselves out to the young men whom the monopoly of women by the rich constrained to be contented with such companions. We have no information whether they were subject to any especial regulations; what the terms of contract were between them and their temporary cohabitants; how they supported themselves in old age; or, indeed, of anything concerning them, except the general nature of their calling. A large class of these prostitutes dwelt near the ports and anchoring grounds, deriving their means of subsistence from open or clandestine intercourse with the sailors, who willingly paid them with little articles of ornament or utility from Europe.
One of the missionaries of the first company desired to marry a Tahiti woman. His brethren, however, strongly objected to the act; first, because she was a heathen, second, because she was a prostitute. There could not be then found on the island, as they declared themselves on belief, a single undebauched girl above twelve years of age; therefore, in accordance with the Scripture prohibition against marrying a “heathen harlot,” they forbade him forming the connection. Nevertheless he persisted, took the prostitute as wife, and is supposed to have been murdered with her connivance.
Inconstancy among wives, and profligacy among unmarried women, was then a characteristic almost universal in Tahiti. The wide-spread practice of procuring abortion concealed many of the intrigues which took place, and the last crime which began visibly to decrease was that of adultery. Nor could this be a matter of wonder. The education of the people was in a school of licentiousness. The most effective lessons in obscenity were afforded by the priests in the temples, and children of tender years indulged in acts of indescribable depravity. Thus in few parts of the world could be discovered a more corrupt system of manners, a more complete absence of morals, than in Tahiti.
Under the influence of the missionaries a great and beneficial change was produced. French priests have now in a measure superseded them; but even their exertions have not been able to neutralize the good effects of the new code of morals introduced by the English friends of civilization.
As to the actual amount, however, of the good which has been effected, the accounts are contradictory. From the missionaries themselves we learn that Christianity has been firmly established; that the female sex has been elevated to an honourable position; that the Christian rite of marriage is now generally observed; that infanticide is wholly abolished; and that the manners of the people have become comparatively pure. The picture, indeed, drawn by these artists, is vivid and full of charms. We cannot, however, accept it without reserve; for such writers have in many parts of the world been too eager to ring their peals of triumph over the appearance of reform, without inquiring into its substantial and durable nature.
Other accounts insist on the truth of a totally different view. A recent author, a merchant, many years resident in Tahiti, describes the result of missionary labour as a mere skinning over of the corruption which exists. “Even now,” he says, speaking of that island, “a people more ready to abandon themselves to sensuality cannot be found under the canopy of heaven.” And further, in noticing the state of the youthful population, he asserts, “It is a rare thing for a woman to preserve her chastity until the age of puberty.” Delicacy, he proceeds to tell us, is a thing unknown. There is hardly a man who would not wink at his wife’s prostitution, or even abet it, to support himself. The same system of corrupt manners is general throughout the islands. The missionaries, by making adultery and fornication offences punishable by fines—so many dollars each—have set up a species of licence for immorality. The penalty is either eluded or laughed at. Sometimes the woman’s paramour pays the penalty, and continues with her. The morals of the people, therefore, have not been radically reformed. Public decency is observed, but private manners are disgusting. The Tahitians have thus learned hypocrisy, for they now practise secretly what was formerly a recognised custom. The men are jealous of their own race, but will bargain for their wives with Europeans. One was asked the reason of this distinction. He instantly made answer, that when a white man took one of their wives he made her a present, passed on his way, and thought no more of her; but it was very different with their own people, for they would be continually hovering about the woman. The legal penalty for adultery by a single man is a fine of ten hogs to the husband. If it is committed by a married man he pays the ten hogs, while his paramour pays his wife another ten to compensate her for the injury she has suffered; thus the bargain is equal. Divorce is optional on either hand. For prostitution, or fornication of any kind, the missionaries enacted a fine. In a climate, however, where the girl ripens into puberty at the age of eight or nine, this becomes a licence, and immorality is very slightly checked. The depopulation of the group, which is still going on, is mainly owing, says the same author, to physical privations acting on moral depravity; for indigence is the lot of the people, and licentiousness now, as formerly, their besetting sin.
We believe this to be an unfair account of the state of things now existing in Tahiti. The writer[60] is possessed of a strong prejudice against the missionaries, and we are inclined to apply to him, with some modification, the observations of Commodore Wilkes, commander of the recent American exploring expedition in reference to that island. He tells us there is a class of traders who defame the missionaries, as well as a profligate class who hate them, because they forbid intoxicating liquors, have abolished lascivious dances, and prevent women going on board ship to prostitute themselves. One charge against the missionaries is, however, proved: they are guilty of a misjudging zeal amounting to fanaticism, forbidding the women to wear chaplets of flowers, because it is a sinful vanity; such a restriction is worse than ridiculous. The Commodore, however, whom we accept as a judicious and a trustworthy authority, already shows that much good has been effected. The population is now almost stationary—the births and deaths among all ages and both sexes were in 1839 naturally proportionate; Christian marriage is established as the national custom, and polygamy abolished; if infanticide be ever practised, it is as a secret crime; and as for immorality, though by no means extirpated, it has been considerably reduced. “Licentiousness,” says Wilkes, “does still exist among them, but the foreign residents and visitors are in a great degree the cause of its continuance, and an unbridled intercourse with them serves to perpetuate it. Severe laws have been enacted, but they cannot be put in force in cases where one of the parties is a foreigner.” He proceeds to deny that the island is conspicuous in this respect, and believes it would show advantageously in contrast with many countries usually styled civilized.
In the distant Sandwich group a similar system of manners existed before the abolition of idolatry in 1819. There was, however, one singular custom: children bore the rank of their mother, not their father, probably from the reason assigned by other savage races for different laws, that the parentage was never certain. Polygamy was practised, but if the king had a daughter by a noble wife she succeeded to the throne, though he should have numerous sons by the others; in fact, they were no more than concubines, though their offspring were not invariably destroyed, unless the mothers belonged to the humbler class of people; all the king’s illegitimate children, however, were immediately killed. Adultery was punished with death; but intrigues were frequent, and infanticide was practised to a terrible extent. Since the enactment of the laws restraining sexual intercourse, the crime has become comparatively rare, and the progress of depopulation has been arrested.
We must, however, first view the people as they were before these reforms occurred: there was little check upon the intercourse of the sexes, except with regard to married women; the young girls being abandoned almost entirely to a dissolute mode of life, the marriage contract was a loose tie, easily broken, without anything of a sacred or even honourable character. Husbands continually abandoned their wives, who invariably destroyed the children thus left to them in their virtual widowhood, and took to prostitution as a means of life. The practice of procuring abortion was also resorted to, even more than infanticide, and women were sometimes killed by the operation; nevertheless, bastard children are sometimes reared, and the language of the islanders supplies a delicate designation for one of this brood: it is called “one that comes.”