eem, _a priori_, no comparison between the
change from "sour toddy" to bad gin, and that from the island kilt to a
pair of European trousers. Yet I am far from persuaded that the one is
any more hurtful than the other; and the unaccustomed race will
sometimes die of pin-pricks. We are here face to face with one of the
difficulties of the missionary. In Polynesian islands he easily obtains
pre-eminent authority; the king becomes his _maire du palais_; he can
proscribe, he can command; and the temptation is ever towards too much.
Thus (by all accounts) the Catholics in Mangareva, and thus (to my own
knowledge) the Protestants in Hawaii, have rendered life in a more or
less degree unliveable to their converts. And the mild, uncomplaining
creatures (like children in a prison) yawn and await death. It is easy
to blame the missionary. But it is his business to make changes. It is
surely his business, for example, to prevent war; and yet I have
instanced war itself as one of the elements of health. On the other
hand, it were perhaps, easy for the missionary to proceed more gently,
and to regard every change as an affair of weight. I take the average
missionary; I am sure I do him no more than justice when I suppose that
he would hesitate to bombard a village, even in order to convert an
archipelago. Experience begins to show us (at least in Polynesian
islands) that change of habit is bloodier than a bombardment.

There is one point, ere I have done, where I may go to meet criticism. I
have said nothing of faulty hygiene, bathing during fevers, mistaken
treatment of children, native doctoring, or abortion--all causes
frequently adduced. And I have said nothing of them because they are
conditions common to both epochs, and even more efficient in the past
than in the present. Was it not the same with unchastity, it may be
asked? Was not the Polynesian always unchaste? Doubtless he was so
always: doubtless he is more so since the coming of his remarkably
chaste visitors from Europe. Take the Hawaiian account of Cook: I have
no doubt it is entirely fair. Take Krusenstern's candid, almost
innocent, description of a Russian man-of-war at the Marquesas; consider
the disgraceful history of missions in Hawaii itself, where (in the war
of lust) the American missionaries were once shelled by an English
adventurer, and once raided and mishandled by the crew of an American
warship; add the practice of whaling fleets to call at the Marquesas,