sought for in a very different direction. It lies chiefly in a very defective system of administration, which is constantly being transferred from one hand to the other, having at its head to-day a ship-captain, and to-morrow possibly an officer of gensdarmes or an engineer. A letter[94] addressed to the Emperor Louis Napoleon by an English merchant long resident at Tahiti, unsparingly unveils the present disorders of Tahiti with respect to rights of property, administration of justice, legislation, and social state, and draws a shocking picture of the actual state of the island, once in such high estimation for the felicity of its inhabitants.
On the other hand, the very benefits the mother country is supposed to derive from its Protectorate are at least problematical. While the establishment of French stations in Oceania has required about £240,000, the annual cost of keeping them on foot has never cost less than £100,000, and of this the Protectorate of Tahiti figures for from £24,000 to £28,000.[95] This by no means trifling sum is not however employed in promoting commerce or advancing trading interests; for not more than two or three ships in the year come direct to Tahiti from France, while the majority of the
fabrics used there are English, which are imported from Valparaiso, the only port with which Papeete has regular communication.
The military colony of Taiohái on the island of Nukahiwa, one of the Marquesas, has been entirely abandoned since 1st January, 1859, on account of the too great cost of keeping it up, although Uté-Moána, the king of the Marquesas, and the chiefs of the island of Nukahiwa, were desirous of retaining the French Protectorate, and had drawn up a formal address of submission, while, on the other hand, New Caledonia (Dum'mbia) can only be kept up at very considerable cost.
Lately great reforms have been everywhere inaugurated, in order to diminish the heavy administrative expense hitherto incurred. The French colonies of eastern and western Oceania are to be provided with entirely independent administrations. The Governor of the French establishments in Oceania Oriental is to reside in Papeete, while his colleague of Oceania Occidental is to have his seat of Government at Port de France in New Caledonia. This subdivision, however, must add materially to the cost of maintenance, while it is difficult to see how it can augment the prospects of any increase of revenue.
The French, in a word, have no success in their attempts anywhere at colonization; they are not practical colonists. The absence of this faculty, if one may call it so, is doubly apparent in the Southern hemisphere, where they are surrounded on all hands by English colonies. True it is, the
English also have usually acquired by the strong hand their possessions in Oceania, in Australia, in Asia, &c., and from the stand-point of humanity it is impossible always to defend the means by which they have made themselves masters of the fairest and most fertile countries on the globe. But what have been the results directly springing from these high-handed acts, these political faits accomplis? England has thrown open to the unrestricted enterprise of all trading and seafaring nations those islands and continents so highly favoured by nature, with their feckless fast-disappearing aboriginal races; she has striven, by giving free institutions, to attract diligent colonists, to develope the natural wealth of these countries by means of scientific exploration, for the benefit of all; she has wafted to the remotest corners of the earth the seeds of Christian civilization, and by her energy, her capacity for labour, and her earnestness of purpose, has impressed all, even the most savage races, with a feeling of envy and astonishment at the intellectual superiority, the power, and the greatness of the white man!
Under the influence of liberal but more morally stringent laws, Tahiti might speedily be raised to the position of a great emporium of the Southern seas, the Singapore of Oceania. Under the French Protectorate, on the contrary, the island, with its population long since renowned for indolence and sensuality, has become, in fact, what a French captain once jocularly termed it, "La Nouvelle Cythère!"
Although the Society Islands are by no means a French
penal settlement (the climate being possibly too healthy), there are, nevertheless, both at Tahiti and Nukahiwa, a few men, rather politically discontented than downright dangerous, whom a merciful interpretation of French martial law has exempted from banishment to Cayenne, (that name of terror![96]) and whom we might almost say that a beneficent destiny has transported to the shores of the South Sea. One of these political offenders, named Longomasino, has to thank the visit of the Austrian frigate to Papeete for his restoration to liberty. He had been a journalist at Toulouse