A Few Very
Brief Extracts Will Enable The Reader To Mark For Himself What
Progressive Improvement, If Any, Has Taken Place.
Nor must it be overlooked that, of these authorities, the two first in
order are largely quoted by the Right Reverend M. Kussell, in a work
composed for the express purpose of imparting information on the
subject of Christian missions in Polynesia.
And he frankly
acknowledges, moreover, that they are such as "cannot fail to have
great weight with the public."
After alluding to the manifold evils entailed upon the natives by
foreigners, and their singularly inert condition; and after somewhat
too severely denouncing the undeniable errors of the mission,
Kotzebue, the Russian navigator, says, "A religion like this, which
forbids every innocent pleasure, and cramps or annihilates every
mental power, is a libel on the divine founder of Christianity. It is
true that the religion of the missionaries has, with a great deal of
evil, effected some good. It has restrained the vices of theft and
incontinence; but it has given birth to ignorance, hypocrisy, and a
hatred of all other modes of faith, which was once foreign to the
open and benevolent character of the Tahitian."
Captain Beechy says that, while at Tahiti, he saw scenes "which must
have convinced the great sceptic of the thoroughly immoral condition
of the people, and which would force him to conclude, as Turnbull
did, many years previous, that their intercourse with the Europeans
had tended to debase, rather than exalt their condition."
About the year 1834, Daniel Wheeler, an honest-hearted Quaker,
prompted by motives of the purest philanthropy, visited, in a vessel
of his own, most of the missionary settlements in the South Seas.
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