Wherever Christianity has been embraced by them, the inhabitants have become actively industrious, and, to use the words of Mr. Williams, are “very apt indeed” at learning European trades. Mr. Ellis’s statement is:—“There are now carpenters who hire themselves out to captains of ships to work at repairs of vessels, etc., for which they receive regular wages; and there are blacksmiths that hire themselves out to captains of ships, for the purpose of preparing ironwork required in building or repairing ships. The natives have been taught not only to construct boats, but to build vessels, and there are, perhaps, twenty (there have been as many as forty) small vessels, of from forty to eighty or ninety tons burthen, built by the natives, navigated sometimes by Europeans, and manned by natives, all the fruit of the natives’ own skill and industry. They have been taught to build neat and comfortable houses, and to cultivate the soil. They have new wants; a number of articles of clothing and commerce are necessary to their comfort, and they cultivate the soil to supply them. At one island, where I was once fifteen months without seeing a single European excepting our own families, there were, I think, twenty-eight ships put in for provisions last year, and all obtained the supplies they wanted. Besides cultivating potatoes and yams, and raising stock, fowls and pigs, the cultivation, the spinning and the weaving of the cotton has been introduced by missionary artizans; and there are some of the chiefs, and a number of the people, especially in one of the islands, who are now decently clothed in garments made after the European fashion, produced from cotton grown in their own gardens, spun by their own children, and woven in the islands. One of the chiefs of the island of Rarotonga, as stated by the missionaries, never wears any other dress than that woven in the island. They have been taught also to cultivate the sugarcane, which is indigenous, and to make sugar, and some of them have large plantations, employing at times forty men. They supply the ships with this useful article, and, at some of the islands, between fifty and sixty vessels touch in a single year. The natives of the islands send a considerable quantity away; I understand that one station sent as much as forty tons away last year. In November last a vessel of ninety tons burthen, built in the islands, was sent to the colony of New South Wales laden with Tahitian-grown sugar. Besides the sugar they have been taught to cultivate, they prepare arrow-root, and they sent to England in one year, as I was informed by merchants in London, more than had been imported into this country for nearly twenty previous years. Cattle also have been introduced and preserved, chiefly by the missionaries; pigs, dogs, and rats were the only animals they had before, but the missionaries have introduced cattle among them. While they continued heathen, they disregarded, nay, destroyed some of those first landed among them; but since that time they have highly prized them, and by their attention to them they are now so numerous as to enable the natives to supply ships with fresh beef at the rate of threepence a pound. The islanders have also been instructed by the missionaries in the manufacture of cocoa-nut oil, of which large quantities are exported. They have been taught to cultivate tobacco, and this would have been a valuable article of commerce had not the duty in New South Wales been so high as to exclude that grown in the islands from the market. The above are some of the proofs that Christianity prepares the way for, and necessarily leads to, the civilization of those by whom it is adopted. There are now in operation among a people who, when the missionaries arrived, were destitute of a written language, seventy-eight schools, which contain between 12,000 and 13,000 scholars. The Tahitians have also a simple, explicit, and wholesome code of laws, as the result of their imbibing the principles of Christianity. This code of laws is printed and circulated among them, understood by all, and acknowledged by all as the supreme rule of action for all classes in their civil and social relations. The laws have been productive of great benefits.”
Here again they have far outstripped us in England. When shall we have a code of laws, so simple and compact, that it may be “printed and circulated amongst us, and understood by all?” The benefits resulting from this intelligible and popular code, Mr. Ellis tells us, have been great. No doubt of it. The benefits of such a code in England would be incalculable; but when will the lawyers, or our enlightened Parliament let us have it? The whole scene of the reformation, and the happiness introduced by Christianity into the South-Sea Islands, is, however, most delightful. Such a scene never was exhibited to the world since its foundation. Mr. Williams’ recent work, descriptive of these islands and the missionary labours there, is fascinating as Robinson Crusoe himself, and infinitely more important in its relations. If ever the idea of the age of gold was realized, it is here; or rather,
Where none contest the fields, the woods, the streams;—
The goldless ages, where gold disturbs no dreams.
Besides the benefits accruing from this improved state to the natives, great are the benefits that accrue from it to the Europeans. The benefit of commerce, from their use of European articles, is and must be considerable. They furnish, too, articles of commerce in no small quantities. Instead of European crews now, in case of wreck on their coasts, being murdered and devoured, they are rescued from the waves at the risk of the lives of the people themselves, and received, as the evidence and works of Ellis and Williams testify, in most remarkable instances, with the greatest hospitality.
But all this springing civilization—this young Christianity,—this scene of beauty and peace, are endangered. The founders of a new and happier state, the pioneers and artificers of civilization, stand aghast at the ruin that threatens their labours,—that threatens the welfare,—nay, the very existence of the simple islanders amongst whom they have wrought such miracles of love and order. And whence arises this danger? whence comes this threatened ruin? Is some race of merciless savages about to burst in upon these interesting people, and destroy them? Yes, the same “irreclaimable and indomitable savages,” that have ravaged and oppressed every nation which they have conquered, “from China to Peru.” The same savages that laid waste the West Indies; that massacred the South Americans; that have chased the North Americans to the “far west;” that shot the Caffres for their cattle; that have covered the coasts of Africa with the blood and fires and rancorous malice of the slave-wars; that have exterminated millions of Hindus by famine, and hold a hundred millions of them, at this moment, in the most abject condition of poverty and oppression; the same savages that are at this moment also carrying the Hill Coolies from the East—as if they had not a scene of enormities there wide enough for their capacity of cruelty—to sacrifice them in the West, on the graves of millions of murdered negroes; the same savages are come hither also. The savages of Europe, the most heartless and merciless race that ever inhabited the earth—a race, for the range and continuance of its atrocities, without a parallel in this world, and, it may be safely believed, in any other, are busy in the South Sea Islands. A roving clan of sailors and runaway convicts have revived once more the crimes and character of the old buccaneers. They go from island to island, diffusing gin, debauchery, loathsome diseases, and murder, as freely as if they were the greatest blessings that Europe had to bestow. They are the restless and triumphant apostles of misery and destruction; and such are their achievements, that it is declared that, unless our government interpose some check to their progress, they will as completely annihilate the islanders, as the Charibs were annihilated in the West Indies. When Captain Cook was at the Sandwich Islands, he estimated the inhabitants at 400,000. In 1823, Mr. Williams made a calculation, and found them about 150,000. Mr. Daniel Wheeler, a member of the Society of Friends, who has just returned from those regions, states that they now are reduced to 110,000; a diminution of 40,000 in fifteen years. Captain Cook estimated the population of Tahiti at 200,000: when the missionaries arrived there, there were not above 8,000.
What a shocking business is this, that when Christianity has been professed in Europe for this 1800 years, it is from Europe that the most dreadful corruption of morals, and the most dismal defiance of every sound principle come. If Christianity, despised and counterfeited by its ancient professors, flies to some remote corner of the globe, and there unfolds to simple admiring eyes her blessings and her charms, out, from Europe, rush hordes of lawless savages, to chase her thence, and level to the dust the dwellings and the very being of her votaries. Shall this be! Will no burning blush rise to European cheeks at this reflection? But let us hear what was said on this subject before the British Parliament.
“It will be hard, we think, to find compensation, not only to Australia, but to New Zealand, and to the innumerable islands of the South Seas, for the murders, the misery, the contamination which we have brought upon them. Our runaway convicts are the pests of savage as well as of civilized society; so are our runaway sailors; and the crews of our whaling vessels, and of the traders from New South Wales, too frequently act in the most reckless and immoral manner when at a distance from the restraints of justice: in proof of this we need only refer to the evidence of the missionaries.
“It is stated that there have been not less than 150 or 200 runaways at once on the island of New Zealand, counteracting all that was done for the moral improvement of the people, and teaching them every vice.
“‘I beg leave to add,’ remarks Mr. Ellis, ‘the desirableness of preventing, by every practicable means, the introduction of ardent spirits among the inhabitants of the countries we may visit or colonize. There is nothing more injurious to the South Sea islanders than seamen who have absconded from ships, setting up huts for the retail of ardent spirits, called grog-shops, which are the resort of the indolent and vicious of the crews of the vessels, and in which, under the influence of intoxication, scenes of immorality, and even murder, have been exhibited, almost beyond what the natives witnessed among themselves while they were heathen. The demoralization and impediments to the civilization and prosperity of the people that have resulted from the activity of foreign traders in ardent spirits, have been painful in the extreme. In one year it is estimated that the sum of 12,000 dollars was expended, in Taheité alone, chiefly by the natives, for ardent spirits.’