CHAPTER XXIX.CONCLUSION.

Where none contest the fields, the woods, the streams;—The goldless ages, where gold disturbs no dreams.

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 150or 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.’

“The lawless conduct of the crews of vessels must necessarily have an injurious effect on our trade, and on that ground alone demands investigation. In the month of April, 1834, Mr. Busby states there were twenty-nine vessels at one time in the Bay of Islands; and that seldom a day passed without some complaint being made to him of the most outrageous conduct on the part of their crews, which he had not the means of repressing, since these reckless seamen totally disregarded the usages of their own country, and the unsupported authority of the British resident.

“The Rev. J. Williams, missionary in the Society Islands, states, ‘that it is the common sailors, and the lowest order of them, the very vilest of the whole, who will leave their ship and go to live amongst the savages, and take with them all their low habits and all their vices.’ The captains of merchant vessels are apt to connive at the absconding of such worthless sailors, and the atrocities perpetrated by them are excessive; they do incalculable mischief by circulating reports injurious to the interests of trade. On an island between the Navigator’s and the Friendly group, he heard there were on one occasion a hundred sailors who had run away from shipping. Mr. Williams gives an account of a gang of convicts who stole a small vessel from New South Wales, and came to Raiatia, one of the Sandwich Islands, where he resided, representing themselves as shipwrecked mariners. Mr. Williams suspected them, and told them he should inform the governor, Sir T. Brisbane, of their arrival, on which they went away to an island twenty miles off, and were received with every kindness in the house of the chief. They took an opportunity of stealing a boat belonging to the missionary of the station, and made off again. The natives immediately pursued, and desired them to return their missionary’s boat. Instead of replying, they discharged a blunderbus that was loaded with cooper’s rivets, which blew the head of one man to pieces; they then killed two more, and a fourth received the contents of a blunderbus in his hand, fell from exhaustion amongst his mutilated companions, and was left as dead. This man, and a boy who had saved himself by diving, returned to their island. ‘The natives were veryrespectable persons; and had it not been that we were established in the estimation of the people, our lives would have been sacrificed. The convicts then went in the boat down to the Navigator’s Islands, and there entered with savage ferocity into the wars of the savages. One of these men was the most savage monster that ever I heard of: he boasted of having killed 300 natives with his own hands.’

“And in June 1833, Mr. Thomas, Wesleyan missionary at the Friendly Islands, still speaks of the mischief done by ill-disposed captains of whalers, who, he says, ‘send the refuse of their crews on shore to annoy us;’ and proceeds to state, ‘the conduct of many of these masters of South-Sea whalers is most abominable; they think no more of the life of an heathen than of a dog. And their cruel and wanton behaviour at the different islands in those seas has a powerful tendency to lead the natives to hate the sight of a white man.’ Mr. Williams mentions one of these captains, who with his people had shot twenty natives, at one of the islands, for no offence; and ‘another master of a whaler, from Sidney, made his boast, last Christmas, at Tonga, that he had killed about twenty black fellows,—for so he called the natives of the Samoa, or Navigator’s Islands—for some very trifling offence; and not satisfied with that, he designed to disguise his vessel, and pay them another visit, and get about a hundred more of them.’ ‘Our hearts,’ continues Mr. Thomas, ‘almost bleed for the poor Samoa people; they are a very mild, inoffensive race, very easy of access; and as they are near to us, we have a great hope of their embracing the truth, viz. that the whole group will do so; for you will learn fromMr. Williams’ letter, that a part of them have already turned to God. But the conduct of our English savages has a tone of barbarity and cruelty in it which was never heard of or practised by them.’”

But these are not all the exploits of these white savages. Those who have seen in shop-windows in London, dried heads of New Zealanders, may here learn how they come there, and to whom the phrenologists andcuriosiare indebted.

“Till lately the tattooed heads of New Zealanders were sold at Sidney as objects of curiosity; and Mr. Yate says he has known people give property to a chief for the purpose of getting them to kill their slaves, that they might have some heads to take to New South Wales.

“This degrading traffic was prohibited by General Darling, the governor, upon the following occasion: In a representation made to Governor Darling, the Rev. Mr. Marsden states, that the captain of an English vessel being, as he conceived, insulted by some native women, set one tribe upon another to avenge his quarrel, and supplied them with arms and ammunition to fight.

“In the prosecution of the war thus excited, a party of forty-one Bay of Islanders made an expedition against some tribes of the South. Forty of the former were cut off; and a few weeks after the slaughter, a Captain Jack went and purchased thirteen chiefs’ heads, and, bringing them back to the Bay of Islands, emptied them out of a sack in the presence of their relations. The New Zealanders were, very properly, so much enraged that they told this captain they should take possession of the ship, and put the laws oftheir country into execution. When he found that they were in earnest, he cut his cable and left the harbour, and afterwards had a narrow escape from them at Taurunga. He afterwards reached Sidney, and it came to the knowledge of the governor, that he brought there ten of these heads for sale, on which discovery the practice was declared unlawful. Mr. Yate mentions an instance of a captain going 300 miles from the Bay of Islands to East Cape, enticing twenty-five young men, sons of chiefs, on board his vessel, and delivering them to the Bay of Islanders, with whom they were at war, merely to gain the favour of the latter, and to obtain supplies for his vessel. The youths were afterwards redeemed from slavery by the missionaries, and restored to their friends. Mr. Yate once took from the hand of a New-Zealand chief a packet of corrosive sublimate, which a captain had given to the savage in order to enable him to poison his enemies.”

Such is the general system. The atrocious character of particular cases would be beyond credence, after all that has now been shewn of the nature of Europeans, were they not attested by the fullest and most unexceptionable authority. The following case was communicated by the Rev. S. Marsden, to Governor-general Darling, and was also afterwards reported to the governor in person by two New Zealand chiefs. Governor Darling forwarded the account of it to Lord Goderich, together with the depositions of two seamen of the brigElizabeth, and those of J. B. Montefiore, Esq., and A. Kennis, Esq. merchants of Sidney, who had embarked on board theElizabethon its return to Entry Island, and had there learned theparticulars of the case, had seen the captive chief sent ashore, and had been informed that he was sacrificed.

“In December 1830, a Captain Stewart, of the brigElizabeth, a British vessel, on promise of ten tons of flax, took above 100 New Zealanders concealed in his vessel, down from Kappetee Entry Island, in Cook’s Strait, to Takou, or Bank’s Peninsula, on the Middle Island, to a tribe with whom they were at war. He then invited and enticed on board the chief of Takou, with his brother and two daughters: ‘When they came on board, the captain took hold of the chief’s hand in a friendly manner, and conducted him and his two daughters into the cabin; shewed him the muskets, how they were arranged round the sides of the cabin. When all was prepared for securing the chief, the cabin-door was locked, and the chief was laid hold on, and his hands were tied fast; at the same time a hook, with a cord to it, was struck through the skin of his throat under the side of his jaw, and the line fastened to some part of the cabin: in this state of torture he was kept for some days, until the vessel arrived at Kappetee. One of his children clung fast to her father, and cried aloud. The sailors dragged her from her father, and threw her from him; her head struck against some hard substance, which killed her on the spot.’ The brother, or nephew, Ahu (one of the narrators), ‘who had been ordered to the forecastle, came as far as the capstan and peeped through into the cabin, and saw the chief in the state above mentioned.’ They also got the chief’s wife and two sisters on board, with 100 baskets of flax. All the men and women who came in the chief’s canoe were killed. ‘Several more canoes came off also with flax,and the people were all killed by the natives of Kappetee, who had been concealed on board for the purpose, and the sailors who were on deck, who fired upon them with their muskets.’ The natives of Kappetee were then sent on shore with some sailors, with orders to kill all the inhabitants they could find; and it was reported that those parties who went on shore murdered many of the natives; none escaped but those who fled into the woods. The chief, his wife and two sisters were killed when the vessel arrived at Kappetee, and other circumstances yet more revolting are added.”

We will now close this black recital of crimes by one more case, in which the natives are represented as the aggressors, though alone upon the evidence of the accused party, and particularly on that of Captain Guard, of whom Mr. Marshall of theAlligator, stated that, “‘in the estimation of the officers of theAlligator, the general sentiment was one of dislike and disgust at his conduct on board, and his conduct on shore.’ He has himself heard him say, that a musketball for every New Zealander was the best mode of civilizing the country.

“In April, 1834, the barqueHarriet, J. Guard, master, was wrecked at Cape Egmont, on the coast of New Zealand. The natives came down to plunder, but refrained from other violence for about ten days, in which interval two of Guard’s men deserted to the savages. They then got into a fray with the sailors, and killed twelve of them: on the part of the New Zealanders twenty or thirty were shot. The savages got possession of Mrs. Guard and her two children. Mr. Guard and the remainder were suffered to retreat, but surrendered themselves to another tribe whomthey met, and who finally allowed the captain to depart, on his promising to return, and to bring back with him a ransom in powder; and they retained nine seamen as hostages. Three native chiefs accompanied Guard to Sidney. Captain Guard had been trading with the New Zealanders from the year 1823, and it was reported that his dealings with them had, in some instances, been marked with cruelty. On Mr. Guard’s representation to the government at Sidney, theAlligatorfrigate, Captain Lambert, and the schoonerIsabella, with a company of the 50th regiment, were sent to New Zealand for the recovery of Mrs. Guard and the other captives, with instructions, if practicable, to obtain the restoration of the captives by amicable means. On arriving at the coast near Cape Egmont, Captain Lambert steered for a fortified village or pah, called the Nummo, where Mrs. Guard was known to be detained. He sent two interpreters on shore, who made promises of payment (though against Captain Lambert’s order) to the natives, and held out also a prospect of trade in whalebone, on the condition that the women and children should be restored. The interpreter could not, from stress of weather, be received on board for some days. The vessel proceeded to the tribe which held the men in captivity, and they were at once given up on the landing of the chiefs whom Captain Lambert had brought back from Sidney. Captain Lambert returned to the tribe at the Nummo, with whom he had communicated through the interpreter, and sent many messages to endeavour to persuade them to give up the woman and one child (the other was held by a third tribe), but without offeringransom. On the 28th September, the military were landed, and two unarmed and unattended natives advanced along the sands. One announced himself as the chief who retained the woman and child, and rubbed noses with Guard in token of amity, expressing his readiness to give them up on the receipt of the promised ‘payment.’ ‘In reply,’ as Mr. Marshall, assistant-surgeon of theAlligator, who witnessed the scene, states, ‘he was instantly seized upon as a prisoner of war’ (by order of Captain Johnson, commanding the detachment), ‘dragged into the whale-boat, and despatched on board theAlligator, in custody of John Guard and his sailors. On his brief passage to the boat insult followed insult; one fellow twisting his ear by means of a small swivel which hung from it, and another pulling his long hair with spiteful violence; a third pricking him with the point of a bayonet. Thrown to the bottom of the boat, she was shoved off before he recovered himself, which he had no sooner succeeded in doing than he jumped overboard, and attempted to swim on shore, to prevent which he was repeatedly fired upon from the boat; but not until he had been shot in the calf of the leg was he again made a prisoner of. Having been a second time secured, he was lashed to a thwart, and stabbed and struck so repeatedly, that, on reaching theAlligator, he was only able to gain the deck by a strong effort, and there, after staggering a few paces aft, fainted, and fell down at the foot of the capstan in a gore of blood. When I dressed his wounds, on a subsequent occasion, I found ten inflicted by the point and edge of the bayonet over his head and face, one in his left breast, which it was at first fearedwould prove, what it was evidently intended to have proved, a mortal thrust, and another in the leg.’

“Captain Lambert, who did not himself see the seizure, admits that the chief was unarmed when he came down to the shore, and that he ‘certainly was severely wounded: he had a ball through the calf of his leg, and he had been struck violently on the head.’

“Captain Johnson proceeded to the pah or fortified village, found it deserted, and burnt it the next morning. On the 30th September, Mrs. Guard and one child were given up, and the wounded chief thereupon was very properly sent on shore, without waiting for the delivery of the other child; but ‘in the evening of the same day,’ Captain Lambert states, ‘I again sent Lieutenant Thomas to ask for the child, whose patience and firmness during the whole of the negotiations, notwithstanding the insults that were offered to him, merit the greatest praise. He shortly after returned on board, having been fired at from one of the pahs while waiting outside the surf. Such treachery could not be borne, and I immediately commenced firing at them from the ship; a reef of rocks, which extend some distance from the shore, I regret, prevented my getting as near them as I could have wished. Several shots fell into the pahs, and also destroyed their canoes.’83

“October 8. After some fruitless negotiation, all the soldiers and several seamen were landed, making a party of 112 men, and were stationed on two terraces of the cliff, one above the other, with a six-pounder carronade, while the interpreter and sailors were left below to wait for the boy. The New Zealanders approached at first with distrust; but at length a fine tall man came forward, and assured Mr. Marshall that the child should be immediately forthcoming, and also forbade our fighting, alleging that his ‘tribe had no wish to fight at all.’ Soon afterwards the boy was brought down on the shoulders of a chief, who expressed to Lieutenant McMurdo his desire to go on board for the purpose of receiving a ransom:—

“On being told that none would be given, he turned away, when one of the sailors seized hold of the child, and discovered it was fastened with a strap or cord; to use his own expression, he had recourse to cutting away, and the child fell upon the beach. Another seaman, thinking the chief would make his escape, levelled his firelock, and shot him dead. The troops hearing the report of the musket, and thinking it was fired by the natives, immediately opened a fire from the top of the cliff upon them, who made a precipitate retreat to the pahs. The child being now in our possession, I made a signal to the ships for the boats, intending to reimbark the troops; but the weather becoming thick, and a shift of wind obliging the vessels to stand out to sea, and, at the same time, finding myself attacked by the natives, who were concealed in the high flax, I found my only alternative was to advance on the pahs. I therefore ordered Lieutenant Gunton with thirty men to the front, in skirmishing order, for the purpose of driving the natives from the high flax from which they were firing: this was done, and, as I have reason to think, with considerable loss on the part of the natives.’84

“The body of the chief is said to have been mutilated, and the head cut off by a soldier, and kicked about. It was identified by means of a brooch, which Mrs. Guard said belonged to the chief, who had adopted and protected her son. It is scarcely necessary to add, that this wanton act met with the reprobation it deserved from Captain Lambert and his officers.

“Captain Lambert states, that he should think there were between twenty and thirty of the natives wounded (and this, be it observed, after the child was recovered), but it was not ascertained. ‘The English went straight forward to attack the pahs, and they had no communication with the natives after.’ The troops immediately took possession of the two villages; and on quitting them, three days afterwards, burnt them to the ground.’”

The language of Lord Goderich, on reviewing some of these cases, must be that of every honourable man.

“‘It is impossible to read, without shame and indignation, the details which these documents disclose. The unfortunate natives of New Zealand, unless some decisive measures of prevention be adopted, will, I fear, be shortly added to the number of those barbarous tribes who, in different parts of the globe, have fallen a sacrifice to their intercourse with civilized men, who bear and disgrace the name of Christians.... I cannot contemplate the too probable results without the deepest anxiety. There can be no more sacred duty than that of using every possible method to rescue the natives of those extensive islands from the further evils which impend over them, and to deliver our own country from the disgrace and crime of having either occasioned or tolerated such enormities.’”

Two gods divide them all—pleasure and gain:For these they live, they sacrifice to these,And in their service wage perpetual warWith conscience and with thee. Lust in their hearts,And mischief in their hands, they roam the earthTo prey upon each other; stubborn, fierce,High-minded, pouring out their own disgrace.Thy prophets speak of such; and, noting downThe features of the last degenerate times,Exhibit every lineament of these.Come then, and added to thy many crowns,Receive one yet, as radiant as the rest,Due to thy last and most effectual work,Thy word fulfilled, the conquest of a world.Cowper—The Task.

Two gods divide them all—pleasure and gain:

For these they live, they sacrifice to these,

And in their service wage perpetual war

With conscience and with thee. Lust in their hearts,

And mischief in their hands, they roam the earth

To prey upon each other; stubborn, fierce,

High-minded, pouring out their own disgrace.

Thy prophets speak of such; and, noting down

The features of the last degenerate times,

Exhibit every lineament of these.

Come then, and added to thy many crowns,

Receive one yet, as radiant as the rest,

Due to thy last and most effectual work,

Thy word fulfilled, the conquest of a world.

Cowper—The Task.

Wehave now followed the Europeans to every region of the globe, and seen them planting colonies, and peopling new lands, and everywhere we have found them the same—a lawless and domineering race, seizing on the earth as if they were the firstborn of creation, and having a presumptive right to murder and dispossess all other people. For more than three centuries we have glanced back at them in their course, and everywhere they have had the word of God in their mouth, and the deeds of darkness intheir hands. In the first dawn of discovery, forth they went singing the Te Deum, and declaring that they went to plant the cross amongst the heathen. As we have already observed, however, it turned out to be the cross of one of the two thieves, and a bitter cross of crucifixion it has proved to the natives where they have received it. It has stood the perpetual sign of plunder and extermination. The Spaniards were reckless in their carnage of the Indians, and all succeeding generations have expressed their horror of the Spaniards. The Dutch were cruel, and everybody abominated their cruelty. One would have thought that the world was grown merciful. Behold North America at this moment, with its disinherited Indians! See Hindustan, that great and swarming region of usurpations and exactions! Look at the Cape, and ask the Caffres whether the English are tender-hearted and just: ask the same question in New Holland: ask it of the natives of Van Dieman’s Land,—men, transported from the island of their fathers. Ask the New Zealanders whether the warriors whose tattooed heads stare us in the face in our museums, were not delicately treated by us. Go, indeed, into any one spot, of any quarter of the world, and ask—no you need not ask, you shall hear of our aggressions from every people that know us. The words of Red-Jacket will find an echo in the hearts of tens of millions of sorrowful and expatriated and enthralled beings, who will exclaim, “you want more land!—you want our country!” It is needless to tell those who have read this history that there is, and can be, nothing else like it in the whole record of mortal crimes. Many are the evils that are doneunder the sun; but there is and can be no evil like that monstrous and earth-encompassing evil, which the Europeans have committed against the Aborigines of every country in which they have settled. And in what country have they not settled? It is often said as a very pretty speech—that the sun never sets on the dominions of our youthful Queen; but who dares to tell us the far more horrible truth, that it never sets on the scenes of our injustice and oppressions! When we have taken a solemn review of the astounding transactions recorded in this volume, and then add to them the crimes against humanity committed in the slave-trade and slavery, the account of our enormities is complete; and there is no sum of wickedness and bloodshed—however vast, however monstrous, however enduring it may be—which can be pointed out, from the first hour of creation, to be compared for a moment with it.

The slave-trade, which one of our best informed philanthropists asserts is going on at this moment to the amount of 170,000 negroes a year, is indeed the dreadful climax of our crimes against humanity. It was not enough that the lands of all newly discovered regions were seized on by fraud or violence; it was not enough that their rightful inhabitants were murdered or enslaved; that the odious vices of people styling themselves the followers of the purest of beings should be poured like a pestilence into these new countries. It was not enough that millions on millions of peaceful beings were exterminated by fire, by sword, by heavy burdens, by base violence, by deleterious mines and unaccustomed severities—by dogs, by man-hunters, and by grief and despair—there yetwanted one crowning crime to place the deeds of Europeans beyond all rivalry in the cause of evil,—and that unapproachable abomination was found in the slave-trade. They had seized on almost all other countries, but they could not seize on the torrid regions of Africa. They could not seize the land, but they could seize the people. They could not destroy them in their own sultry clime, fatal to the white men, they therefore determined to immolate them on the graves of the already perished Americans. To shed blood upon blood, to pile bones upon bones, and curses upon curses. What an idea is that!—the Europeans standing with the lash of slavery in their hands on the bones of exterminated millions in one hemisphere, watching with remorseless eyes their victims dragged from another hemisphere—tilling, not with their sweat, but with their heart’s blood, the soil which is, in fact, the dust of murdered generations of victims. To think that for three centuries this work of despair and death has been going on—for three centuries!—while Europe has been priding itself on the growth of knowledge and the possession of the Christian faith; while mercy, and goodness, and brotherly love, have been preached from pulpits, and wafted towards heaven in prayers! That from Africa to America, across the great Atlantic, the ships of outrage and agony have been passing over, freighted with human beings denied all human rights. The mysteries of God’s endurance, and of European audacity and hypocrisy are equally marvellous. Why, the very track across the deep seems to me blackened by this abominable traffic;—there must be the dye of blood in the very ocean. One might surely trace these monsters by the smell ofdeath, from their kidnapping haunts to the very sugar-mills of the west, where canes and human flesh are ground together. The ghosts of murdered millions, were enough, one thinks, to lead the way without chart or compass! The very bed of the ocean must be paved with bones! and the accursed trade is still going on! We are still strutting about in the borrowed plumes of Christianity, and daring to call God our father, though we are become the tormentors of the human race from China to Peru, and from one pole to the other!85

The whole history of European colonization is of a piece. It is with grief and indignation, that passing before my own mind the successive conquests and colonies of the Europeans amongst the native tribes of newly-discovered countries, I look in vain for a single instance of a nation styling itself Christian and civilized, acting towards a nation which it is pleased to term barbarous with Christian honesty and common feeling. The only opportunity which the aboriginal tribes have had of seeing Christianity in its real form and nature, has been from William Penn and the missionaries. But both Penn and the missionaries have in every instance found their efforts neutralized, and their hopes of permanent good to their fellow-creatures blasted, by the profligacy and the unprincipled rapacity of the Europeans as a race. Never was there a race at once so egotistical and so terrible! With the most happy complacency regarding themselves as civilized and pious, while acting the savage on the broadest scale, and spurning every principle of natural or revealed religion. But where the missionaries have been permitted to act for any length of time on the aboriginal tribes, what happy results have followed. The savage has become mild; he has conformed to the order and decorum of domestic life; he has shewn that all the virtues and affections which God has implanted in the human soul are not extinct in him; that they wanted but the warmth of sympathy and knowledge to call them forth; he has become an effective member of the community, and his productions have taken their value in the general market. From the Jesuits in Paraguay to the missionaries in the South Seas, this has been the case. The idiocy of the man who killed his goose that he might get the golden eggs, was wisdom compared to the folly of the European nations, in outraging and destroying the Indian races, instead of civilizing them. Let any one look at the immediate effect amongst the South Sea Islanders, the Hottentots, or the Caffres, of civilization creating a demand for our manufactures, and of bringing the productions of their respective countries into the market, and then from these few and isolated instances reflect what would have been now the consequence of the civilization of North and South America, of a great portion of South Africa, of the Indian Islands, of the good treatment and encouragement of the millions of Hindustan. Let him imagine, if he can, the immense consumption of our manufactured goods through all these vast and populous countries, and the wonderful variety of their natural productions which they would have sent us in exchange.

There is no more doubt than of the diurnal motion of the earth, that by the mere exercise of common honesty on the part of the whites, the greater part of all these countries would now be civilized, and a tide of wealth poured into Europe, such as the strongest imagination can scarcely grasp; and that, too, purchased, not with the blood and tears of the miserable, but by the moral elevation and happiness of countless tribes. The waste of human life and human energies has been immense, but not more immense than the waste of the thousand natural productions of a thousand different shores and climates. The arrow-root, the cocoa-nut oil, the medicinal oils and drugs of the southern isles; the beautiful flax of New Zealand; sugar and coffee, spices and tea, from millions of acres where they might have been raised ill abundance—woods and gums, fruits and gems and ivories, have been left unproduced or wasted in the deserts, because the wonderful and energetic race of Europe chose to be as lawless as they were enterprising, and to be the destroyers rather than the benefactors of mankind. For more than three centuries, and down to the very last hour, as this volume testifies, has this system, stupid as it was wicked, been going on. Thank God, the dawn of a new era appears at last!

The wrongs of the Hottentots and Caffres, brought to the public attention by Dr. Philip and Pringle,86have led to Parliamentary inquiry; that inquiry hasled to others;—the condition of the natives of the South Seas, and finally of all the aboriginal tribes in our colonies, has been brought under review. The existence of a mass of evils and injuries, so enormous as to fill any healthy mind with horror and amazement, has been brought to light; and it is impossible that such facts, once made familiar to the British public, can ever be lost sight of again. Some expiation has already been made to a portion of our victims. Part of the lands of the Caffres has been returned, a milder and more rational system of treatment has been adopted towards them. Protectors of the Aborigines have in one or two instances been appointed. New and more just principles of colonization have been proposed, and in a degree adopted. In the proposed Association for colonizing New Zealand, and in the South Australian settlement87already made, these better notions are conspicuous. But these symptoms of a more honourable conduct toward the Aborigines, are, with respect to the evils we have done, and the evils that exist, but as the light of the single morning star before the sun has risen. Many are the injuries and oppressions of our fellow-creatures which the philanthropic have to contend against; but there is no evil, and no oppression, that is a hundredth part so gigantic as this. There is no case in which we owe such a mighty sum of expiation: all other wrongs are but the wrongs of a small section of humanity compared with the whole. The wrongs of the Negro are great, and demand all the sympathy and active attention which they receive; but the numbers of the negroesin slavery are but as a drop in the bucket compared to the numbers of the aborigines who are perishing beneath our iron and unchristian policy. The cause of the aborigines is the cause of three-fourths of the population of the globe. The evil done to them is the great and universal evil of the age, and is the deepest disgrace of Christendom. It is, therefore, with pleasure that I have seen the “Aborigines’ Protection Society” raise its head amongst the many noble societies for the redress of the wrongs and the elevation of humanity that adorn this country. Such a society must become one of the most active and powerful agents of universal justice: it must be that or nothing, for the evil which it has to put down is tyrannous and strong beyond all others. It cannot fail without the deepest disgrace to the nation—for the honour of the nation, its Christian zeal, and its commercial interests, are all bound up with it. Where are we to look for a guarantee for the removal of the foulest stain on humanity and the Christian name? Our government may be well disposed to adopt juster measures; but governments are not yet formed on those principles, and with those views, that will warrant us to depend upon them.

There is no power but the spirit of Christianity living in the heart of the British public, which can secure justice to the millions that are crying for it from every region of the earth. It is that which must stand as the perpetual watch and guardian of humanity; and never yet has it failed. The noblest spectacle in the world is that constellation of institutions which have sprung out of this spirit of Christianity in the nation, and which are continually labouring to redresswrongs and diffuse knowledge and happiness wherever the human family extends. The ages of dreadful inflictions, and the present condition of the native tribes in our vast possessions, once known, it were a libel on the honour and faith of the nation to doubt for a moment that a new era of colonization and intercourse with unlettered nations has commenced; and I close this volume of the unexampled crimes and marvellous impolicy of Europe, with the firm persuasion—

That heavenward all things tend. For all were oncePerfect, and all must be at length restored.So God has greatly purposed; who would elseIn his dishonoured works himself endureDishonour, and be wronged without redress.Haste, then, and wheel away a shattered worldYe slow revolving seasons! We would see—A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet—A world that does not hate and dread His laws,And suffer for its crime; would learn how fairThe creature is that God pronounces good,How pleasant in itself what pleases Him.—Cowper.

That heavenward all things tend. For all were once

Perfect, and all must be at length restored.

So God has greatly purposed; who would else

In his dishonoured works himself endure

Dishonour, and be wronged without redress.

Haste, then, and wheel away a shattered world

Ye slow revolving seasons! We would see—

A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet—

A world that does not hate and dread His laws,

And suffer for its crime; would learn how fair

The creature is that God pronounces good,

How pleasant in itself what pleases Him.—Cowper.

1Mickle’s Camoens.

2Mickle.

3How affecting is Peter Martyr’s account of these poor Lucayans, thus fraudulently decoyed from their native countries. “Many of them, in the anguish of despair, obstinately refuse all manner of sustenance, and retiring to desert caves and unfrequented woods, silently give up the ghost. Others, repairing to the sea-coast on the northern side of Hispaniola, cast many a longing look towards that part of the ocean where they suppose their own islands to be situated; and as the sea-breeze rises, they eagerly inhale it—fondly believing that it has lately visited their own happy valleys, and comes fraught with the breath of those they love, their wives and their children. With this idea, they continue for hours on the coast, until nature becomes utterly exhausted, when, stretching out their arms towards the ocean, as if to take a last embrace of their distant country and relatives, they sink down and expire without a groan.... One of them, who was more desirous of life, or had greater courage than most of his countrymen, took upon him a bold and difficult piece of work. Having been used to build cottages in his native country, he procured instruments of stone, and cut down a large spongy tree, calledjaruma(thebombax, or wild cotton), the body of which he dexterously scooped into a canoe. He then provided himself with oars, some Indian corn, and a few gourds of water, and prevailed on another man and woman to embark with him on a voyage to the Lucayos. Their navigation was prosperous for near two hundred miles, and they were almost within sight of their long-lost shores, when unfortunately they were met by a Spanish ship, which brought them back to slavery and sorrow! The canoe is still preserved in Hispaniola as a curiosity, considering the circumstances under which it was made.”—Decad.vii.

4In less than fifty years from the arrival of the Spaniards, not more than two hundred Indians could be found in Hispaniola; and Sir Francis Drake states that when he touched there in 1585, not one was remaining; yet so little were the Spaniards benefited by their cruelty, that they were actually obligedto convert pieces of leather into money!—See Hakluyt’s Voyages, vol. iii.

5Las Casas, in his zeal for the Indians, has been charged with exaggerating the numbers destroyed, but no one has attempted to deny the following fact asserted by him: “I once beheld four or five principal Indians roasted alive at a slow fire; and as the miserable victims poured forth dreadful screams, which disturbed the commanding officer in his afternoon slumbers—he sent word that they should be strangled; but the officer on guard (I know his name—I know his relatives in Seville) would not suffer it; but causing their mouths to be gagged, that their cries might not be heard, he stirred up the fire with his own hands, and roasted them deliberately till they all expired.I saw it myself!!!”

6Clavigero gives a curious account of the mode in which Cortez took possession of the province of Tabasco, on the plains of Coutla, where he killed eight hundred of the natives, and founded a small city in memory thereof, calling itMadonna della Victoria! Here he put on his shield, unsheathed his sword, and gave three stabs with it to a large tree which was in the principal village, declaring that if any person durst oppose his possession, he would defend it with that sword.

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