the authority of a
well-organized government. Here the evidence of these voyages and
of others which we could mention, must be allowed considerable
importance. There is the strongest reason, indeed, to believe that the
inhabitants of all the South Sea islands are now chargeable with this
inhumanity, or are but recently recovered from its dominion. We
might easily enlarge on this subject, but what has been said, it is
probable, is sufficient to direct the attention of the reader, which
is all we could find, room to do in the narrow compass of a note.
But it is probable, that to most persons, the observations of a late
navigator, Captain Krusenstern, will be admitted as decisive of the
question of fact, without further enquiry. They may have another
effect too, viz. to destroy that delusion which many persons labour
under as to the innocence and amiableness of mankind in a state of
nature. "Notwithstanding," says he, "the favourable account in Captain
Cook's voyages of the Friendly, the Society, and the Sandwich islands,
and the enthusiasm with which Forster undertakes their defence against
all those who should make use of any harsh expression with regard
to them, I cannot refrain from declaring the inhabitants of all the
islands of this ocean to be savages, but as ranking generally, perhaps
with a very trifling exception, with those men who are still one
degree below the brute creation. In a word, they are all cannibals:
We need only recollect the islanders who have already been proved to
belong to this class;--for instance, the New Zealanders, the cruel
inhabitants of Fidji, the Navigateur, the Mendoza, Washington, the
Tolomon, and Sandwich islands, the islands of Louisiade and New
Caledonia. The good name which the inhabitants of the Friendly islands
had acquired has suffered very much by the affair of Captain Bligh,
and the visit of D'Entrecasteaux, and it may now be maintained, with
some degree of certainty, that they have in this respect the same
taste as their neighbours in the Fidji islands, and the Isles des
Navigateurs." He has more to the same effect, and is particular in
shewing how even the Society islanders, whom he admits to be the
most humane and civilized of all the natives of this region, are
notwithstanding deformed with horrid crimes, from which the passage
to cannibalism is very easy, supposing even that certain suspicious
circumstances do not warrant the opinion that they are but recently
emerged fr