as for this deception, sought its natural satisfaction, on an occasion on which it was stimulated by a particular provocation of the most exasperating char

acter.

The incorrect accounts of the cause of Cook's death restricted the intercourse of the natives of the islands with foreigners for some years. But in 1786, trade was opened by the vessels, King George and Queen Charlotte, which has continued to increase steadily up to the present time. Occasional outrages, for which foreigners were too often themselves to blame, were sufficient to keep up for many years the reputation of the Hawaiians for cruelty and treachery.

The arrival of Vancouver in 1792 and the subsequent publication of his narrative, had the effect of producing a more just opinion of the character and capabilities of the Hawaiians. His treatment of the natives and of King Kamehameha, was benevolent, honest, and impartial, though firm and polite, and it enabled him to prove that degraded as were the people, in their state of heathen brutality, they were yet susceptible of more moral and religious improvement than Cook had represented. Indeed, his whole deportment at the islands, afforded a most marked and forcible contrast to that of the last-named navigator, whose errors Vancouver, as a junior officer with him, had personally observed and deemed necessary to avoid. The visit produced a most agreeable effect upon the islanders, who first learned, from his example, the power of morality and religion, and the true policy of justice.

It was unfortunate for their civilisation that the death of this estimable man prevented the fulfilment of his promise to return to the Islands. No one had as yet exercised upon them an influence so thoroughly beneficial, and no one of the numerous foreigners who visited the Islands before 1810, is remembered with so much affection and gratitude. Intercourse with foreigners had alone taught them their wants and their inferiority to civilized nations; and among the more intelligent of the natives who first endeavored to possess themselves of the various qualities which were recognized as necessary to put them on a par with the strangers, was Kamehameha I., the king of the Islands. This great savage, in the

imaginative language of the Hawaiians, "the lonely one," although not born to the sovereignty of the group, eventually made himself, by his own superiority of character and resources, from the ruler of one island, the king of the whole. This master-mind at once comprehended the degradation of his race, and he put from him, by one effort, the whole incubus of drunkenness, licentiousness, cruelty and avarice, which had become the nature of the island chieftains. He felt his own superiority to those around him, and made himself the first in power as he was the first in acuteness, foresight and general intelligence. What management failed to accomplish was obtained by force, until he had rendered himself the undisputed master. Brave to rashness, and conquering his enemies as much by policy as by strength, he first gained victories which were not sullied by indiscriminate slaughter and outrage. The chiefs subdued by his arms were won over to the strongest adherence by his combined mercy and skilful policy, and the magnanimous use which he made of his victories. This extraordinary character, although he had heard of Christianity, died (1819) in the faith of his ancestors. His active mind impelled him to make the inquiry of such Europeans as were attached to his person, what was the nature and importance of the new religion; but unfortunately, not one of them possessed sufficient knowledge or belief in the truth of Christianity, to satisfy his yearnings for a more spiritual and rational faith. We regret that the restriction of our limits forbid our dwelling more at length on the character and history of this great and good old savage, who, on his scale and in his sphere, was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable men the age has produced.

He was succeeded by his son, Liholiho, or, as he styled himself, Kamehameha II., whose qualities were insufficient to retain the influence possessed by his father. Surrounded by base and designing whites, their wicked counsels kept down for a season the progress of civilisation, and at one time threatened a permanent return to heathenism. Eventually his better nature and better counsels prevailed, and the missionaries (who came to the island shortly after his accession), were enabled to continue their benevolent labors. The subse

quent history of this king and his consort, Kamamalu, their voyage to England, and the fatal termination of their tour in the death of both of them in 1824, are familiar to the public, and it is unnecessary to record the closing scenes of the reign here. His brother, the present king of the islands, Kauikeaouli, or Kamehameha III., succeeded him. The policy of this ruler has encouraged intercourse with civilised nations, has protected the Mission, and bids fair to place his country in some respects on a level which many European nations might in vain attempt to attain. By his direction, a constitution has been framed and a code of laws, suited to the nature of the islands, established. Order and decorum now prevail among a people accustomed to every scene of outrage and violence. Commerce has received an impulse from his fostering hand, and the native resources of the islands have been made productive. Security of life and property have attracted a more intelligent class of foreigners, and the prosperity of the islands, if secured from external interference, will continue steadily to advance as their great advantages become more fully recognized. Of their political importance we shall speak more fully, as it is a subject comparatively misunderstood in the United States.

The arrival of the American Missionaries shortly after the accession of Liholiho or Kamehameha II., has been already alluded to. They landed on the 3d of March, 1820-an event the most important, in the consequences of which it was to be the seed, that has yet occurred in the history of the Hawaiian archipelago. The increased intercourse with foreigners, and the impunity with which they had broken through the tabu, in defiance of a supposed offended divinity, had already shaken the faith of the more intelligent, in the truth of the system in which they had been educated. Before the arrival of the Missionaries, the king Liholiho had given the death-blow to the old superstition, by the destruction of the idols and by his open neglect of the ceremonies which it enjoined. His observation had shown him the superiority of the whites on the islands over their native population; and if the example and influence of the Europeans did not lead him to Christianity, they

taught him at least the folly of Paganism. Although some of those whites who were about his train were outcasts from other lands, were not only debased and licentious, but even endeavored to impede rather than to aid any improvement in the character and habits of the king, which would have rebuked their own more criminal viciousness, and withdrawn him from their influence, they could not entirely suppress the evidence of their superiority to the natives, as exhibited in the greater amount of knowledge which they possessed. Commerce, even with an inferior class of whites, had smoothed the path for the Mission, and the Hawaiians had already a suspicion that there existed better civilized people than resided among them. It is a fact not generally known or believed in the religious world, that the success of missions has always been in direct proportion to the contemporaneous intercourse with white men engaged in trade. The testimony of the whole Pacific proves this to be true. The intercourse of the Society and Sandwich groups with the whites, and the traffic carried on previous to and since the establishment of missions in these groups, has elevated them above the Samoa and Friendly isles, where communication with other whites than missionaries is limited, and where those benevolent individuals themselves admit, that though the appearance of the people is flattering to their efforts, the result is still doubtful.

The few Methodists who were settled upon the Fejees, have hitherto entirely failed of success, as the barbarous character of the natives has driven foreign commerce to less treacherous shores. The Kingsmill group, though little known, is yet unprepared for missionary enterprise; while Ascension and Rotuma are predisposed by foreign residents for proper religious impressions. It may be gratifying to sectarian zeal to magnify the results attained by missionary labors, and attribute to their efforts results little short of miraculous; truly, the main bulk of the worthy men composing the glorious little army of Christian missionaries, have labored for their holy cause with a devotion unsurpassed in the annals of religious and moral enterprise; but it is no reflection on their motives, and no detraction from the value of their zeal, to tell the whole truth in an examination

In addition to these sources of trouble, and hindrance to the improvement of the Islands, has been another, within the ranks of those who ought rather to have been united in a fraternal harmony, in the sacred mission to which both were devoted, than thus arrayed in an attitude of mutual hostility, and a spirit of embittered sectarian animosity. We allude to the Catholic controversy. On this question we had at first looked to Mr. Jarves's book with a hope to find an impartial statement of its merits, in that spirit of candor and just liberality befitting the responsibility assumed by him as its historian. In this expectation we have to confess ourselves somewhat disappointed. No one, an entire stranger to the whole subject, can go through his narrative of it, without experiencing, as it seems to us, a strong reaction of distrust against the truth of a history so manifestly onesided, of a picture so exclusively composed of dazzling lights on the one side and the darkest of shades on the other. None but a mind as deeply imbued as is evidently that of the author, with that spirit of violent anti-Catholic feeling-(nay, bigotry is scarce too strong a term)-so prevalent amongst most of the sects of Protestantism, can fail, as it seems to us, to feel the force of his testimony as a witness to be greatly impaired by the undisguised strength of his prejudice against the one of the parties, and the one of the sides to the controversy. Mr. Jarves puts forward in his Preface a special claim to confidence, on the score of disinterestedness in the premises, because, forsooth, he did not happen to belong to "the same sect as the missionary body in the Islands,- -as if it would make much difference in the degree of justice which the Catholics would be likely to receive at his hands, in relation to a controversy vehemently sectarian and partly national, whether he found his place within one particular shade or another, of the various denominations of Protestantism. Whatever comparatively trifling variations of doctrine or discipline may erect their countless imaginary barriers of separation in the midst of them, yet, in general, these differences amongst themselves are but an emulation of animosity against the common object

We have no doubt that Mr. Jarves means to be true and just, and honestly believes himself as disinterested and as free from bias as he thus professes to be. But alas for that worst form of prejudice which is always loudest in asserting its own impartiality yes, and sincerest in believing it!

The leading outlines of the case are simply these, so far as we have been able to derive any just conclusions from the perusal of the conflicting statements of the antagonist parties. The Protestant Missionaries sent out by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, got the first possession of the ground, having arrived at the Islands in May, 1820, at the commencement of the reign of Kamehameha II. They at first obtained permission to remain for a single year, within which time they so far succeeded in gaining the favor of the king and the chiefs, by their excellence of character and life, and by the progress which they made in the propagation of the divine truths they came to teach, that their root was already struck too deep into the soil of this new and interesting field of missionary labor, to be ever again overthrown. They speedily acquired a controlling ascendency of influence in the counsels of the government, of which they did not fail to make the use befitting their character as ministers of the Gospel, and in harmony with the great objects of their presence there. The Mission became the principle of a new orderthe animating force of a new and strong movement. It took possession of the nascent civilisation just beginning to appear, under the influence of various causes antecedent to its arrival as well as connected with its immediate labors; and while it exerted itself with a successful zeal to stimulate its development, it strove to impress upon it a strong and pervading religious character. Properly to understand the part it played, it should be borne in mind that the religion and government of the Islands have always been closely united; nor in the change in both of them

(the one from the gross brutality of heathenism before prevalent to Christianity, and the other from the savage despotism of the petty kings and chiefs to a form of government not far removed now from one of constitutional

freedom)-could it be otherwise than that the same union should continue. Christianized by the influence of the Mission, the leading members of the government naturally sought to apply to practice, and to enforce with the usual zeal of recent conversion, the ideas of religious and moral duty which they derived both from the doctrines they thus learned, and from the lives of their good and pious teachers. Hence doubtless many severe regulations for the observance of the Sabbath, the suppression of intemperance and licentiousness, &c., against which the habits of moral laxity of many of the foreign residents, and most of the seafaring classes of men who frequented the islands, would naturally dispose them to rebel, with an angry and resentful feeling against those to whose influence they very justly attributed them.

To the reports in various ways spread abroad through the agency of these influences, may be ascribed the general prevalence of the belief in the puritanical and priest-ridden character of the native government, under the controlling though subtle sway of an ambitious missionary priesthood, reproducing here on a small scale all the symptoms that have everywhere attended the domination of similar classes of men in the political affairs of governments. That the American Mission did possess the power thus ascribed to its members, is indisputable; in the very nature of things it was inseparable from their position, and their relation to the government and people of whose growing civilisation they were the nucleus. It is not impossible, too, that they may have on some occasions made a use of it, more consistent with their own peculiarly strict notions of religious duty, than judicious or conciliatory; for we find even Mr. Jarves, their warm friend and indiscriminate eulogist, admitting respecting Mr. Bingham, (who appears to have been the most active and influential individual of the Mission), that "it must be acknowledged he possessed a tenacity of opinion, and a sectarian zeal, which at times separated him in some degree from his friends, and marred his usefulness." But with all allowance for this, and for that peculiar severity of conscientious hostility to everything tinged with a character of Roman Catholicism, which is less individual than

the pervading spirit of their sect and body, it is yet abundantly evident that they have fulfilled the duties of their vocation well and worthily, as faithful servants of their Master and friends of their fellow-men; and their labors have certainly been the means, under God, of producing fruits of moral and social regeneration, on a larger scale, and of a more signal excellence and value, than seem ever to have rewarded a similar enterprise and devotion, in any case of missionary history within our remembrance.

It was not likely that the Roman Catholic Church should witness the rapid progress thus making by a Protestant Mission in gaining possession of such a ground, without at least an effort to dispute so desirable a conquest, by a fair rivalry and competition of missionary enterprise. Accordingly two priests made their appearance at the Islands, on the 7th of July, 1827, from the college of Picpus in France, the one M. Bachelot, a Frenchman, and the other Mr. Short, a British citizen by birth. This event had its immediate origin in an application made to the College by a Mr. Rives, a Frenchman, of whose character no very creditable account is given by Mr. Jarves, who accompanied Liholiho on his visit to England, and from thence proceeded to France. This application was stated to be at the request of Boki, a chief of rank in attendance on Liholiho. The regency of the kingdom remained in the hands of the old queen Kaahumanu, widow of the first king, Kamehameha I., and an able and distinguished chief named Kalaimoku, with whom it had been left by Liholiho (Kamehameha II.) on his departure for England. Kalaimoku, in the figurative language of the people termed the "iron cable" of Hawaii, died on the 2d of March, 1827; the old queen, a woman of great energy and imperiousness of character, remaining sole regent. Boki, who was a brother of Kalaimoku, was vested with the guardianship of the young king. It appears that the priests never obtained formal permission to establish themselves permanently on the islands; though they were favored by Boki, and allowed to erect a house and a chapel. It was not likely that they could long remain at peace with the American Mission, or with the native government which was