 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.«24
    Captain Beechey says, that while at Tahiti he saw scenes »which must have
convinced the greatest sceptic of the thoroughly immoral condition of the
people, and which would force him to conclude, as Turnbull25 did many years
previous, that their intercourse with the Europeans had tended to debase, rather
than exalt their condition.«26
    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. He remained some time at Tahiti;
receiving the hospitalities of the missionaries there, and, from time to time,
exhorting the natives.
    After bewailing their social condition, he frankly says of their religious
state, »Certainly, appearances are unpromising; and however unwilling to adopt
such a conclusion, there is reason to apprehend that Christian principle is a
great rarity.«27
    Such, then, is the testimony of good and unbiased men, who have been upon
the spot; but how comes it to differ so widely from impressions of others at
home? Simply thus: instead of estimating the result of missionary labours by the
number of heathens who have actually been made to understand and practise (in
some measure, at least) the precepts of Christianity, this result has been
unwarrantably inferred from the number of those who, without any understanding
of these things, have in any way been induced to abandon idolatry and conform to
certain outward observances.
    By authority of some kind or other, exerted upon the natives through their
chiefs, and prompted by the hope of some worldly benefit to the latter, and not
by appeals to reason, have conversions in Polynesia been in most cases brought
about.
    Even in one or two instances - so often held up as wonderful examples of
divine power - where the natives have impulsively burned their idols, and rushed
to the waters of baptism, the very suddenness
