hical and hereditary in one family. There is not the smallest
reason to think that the Otaheitans, with all their ingenuity and love
of freedom, are, any more than other people, exempt from those
principles so vigorously depicted by Cowper in his "Task," as the origin
of kingship:--

It is the abject property of most,
That, being parcel of the common mass,
And destitute of means to raise themselves,
They sink, and settle, lower than they need.
They know not what it is to feel within
A comprehensive faculty, that grasps
Great purposes with ease, that turns and wields
Almost without an effort, plans too vast
For their conception, which they cannot move.
Conscious of impotence, they soon grow drunk
With gazing, when they see an able man
Step forth to notice; and besotted thus,
Build him a pedestal, and say, "Stand there,
And be our admiration and our praise."

But at what time this able man stepped forth to monopolise the
admiration and the allegiance of his brethren (all sound men and true!),
is not in the record. The Otaheitans, we know, are not historians.
Probably, then, they have been favoured by their priests with some good
orthodox doctrine, as to divine appointment on the subject. Indeed, the
case of these islanders is one in which the necessary effect of that
consciousness of impotence and self-abasement, is scarcely in any degree
counteracted by other principles. We see it literally exemplifying the
description of the poet,--

Thenceforth they are his cattle: drudges, born
To bear his burdens, drawing in his gears,
And sweating in his service, his caprice
Becomes the soul that animates them all.

"It is considered," says the missionary account, "as the distinctive
mark of their regal dignity, to be every where carried about on men's
shoulders. As their persons are esteemed sacred, before them all must
uncover below their breast. They may not enter into any house but their
own, because, from that moment, it would become raa, or sacred, and none
but themselves, or their train, could dwell or eat there; and the land
their feet touched would be their property." It sometimes happens in
other countries, it is true, that men can be found base enough to
emulate beasts of burden, by drawing the carriages of their sovereign
lords. This, however, is only on some peculiar occasions, where certain
clear indications of personal superiority have been manifested, to