have done so. Twenty moons ago you committed your people, with their wives and children, and property, to my care; now inquire if, in any case, they have suffered injury. And do you ask me whether I will protect English missionaries, the very persons we are so anxious to have? Why do you propose such a question?' Feeling at once that I had committed myself, I instantly replied, "You cannot suppose that I ask for my own conviction the faithful performance of your promises is perfectly satisfactory to my own mind; but you know that the English are a very wise people, and one of their first questions, in reply to my application for missionaries, will be, "Who is Malietoa? and what guarantee have you for the safety of our people?" and I wish to carry home your words, which will be far more satisfactory than my own.' 'Oh!' he exclaimed, 'that is what you wish, is it?' and significantly moving his hand from his mouth towards me, he said, 'Here they are, take them; here they are, take them: go and procure for us as many missionaries as you can, and tell them to come with confidence; for, if they bring property enough to reach from the top of yonder high mountain down to the sea-beach, and leave it exposed from one year's end to another, not a particle of it shall be touched.'"*

Young men of England! in what light does the Martyr of Erromanga appear to you, as he works out a constitution for these benighted and enslaved inhabitants of the South Seas ? Can you conceive of a human being more gloriously occupied? How little, as compared with him, have been the heroes of all times, and

* Williams, p. 112.

of all lands! When did warriors go forth, in good faith, making war upon the rulers of enslaved nations, in order to emancipate those nations, and to give them a free constitution? The one or two seeming instances have been less real than collusive. The common result has been the succession of one despot to another. Gunpowder has no moral power; the bayonet and the battleaxe are slow reformers. Truly does Johnson remark, that "the wars of civilized nations make very slow changes in the system of empire. The public perceives scarcely any alteration, but an increase of debt; and the few individuals who are benefited, are not supposed to have the clearest right to their advantages. If he that shared the danger enjoyed the profit; if he that bled in the battle grew rich by victory; he might show his gains without envy. But, at the conclusion of a long war, how are we recompensed for the death of multitudes, and the expense of millions, but by contemplating the sudden glories of pay-masters and agents, contractors and commissioners, whose equipages shine like meteors, and whose palaces rise like exhalations!" Is this all the gain of war, even among civilized nations? What then must be the result among nations still buried in the depths of barbarism! Oh, compare these results with the achievements of the missionary! Who can estimate his services, even in those things which pertain to this life? You, who have always breathed the air of a pure and generous freedom, are unable to do so; but your honoured fathers, who sleep in the dust, and who, in the days of their flesh, trembled at the tyrant's rod, were they to arise from their sepulchres, they could state the case of bondage and liberty. They could detail the horrors of arbitrary government, where life,

property, and personal freedom, are in constant peril, and at the utter mercy of the whim, avarice, passion, revenge, or ambition of an individual, who is, oft-times, according to the prophet, "the basest of men."

Oh! happy England! how changed her condition since the period when she groaned under the despots of the Norman line, who subverted her Saxon constitution and destroyed her liberties! In those dreadful days, the will of the prince was the law of the people. Take the forest laws of those times as an illustration of the misery of the country. Castration, the loss of the eyes, the amputation of the hands and feet, were the penalties for killing a hare! The house of Stuart would fain have walked in the paths of our Norman tyrants. James the First frankly informs his parliament, that he and his ancestors were the gracious source of all the people's privileges, and that "as to dispute what God may do, is blasphemy, so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power." This is the pure and genuine diction of despotism! It is, nevertheless, most revolting to the feelings of free-born Englishmen. Yet time was, when the guardians and expositors of our laws were so lost in subservience to power, that when Richard II., impatient of the fetters of certain acts, asked the assembled judges whether he could not annul them, the ready answer was, "The king is above the law." From such a principle, the transition is easy to another, viz., "The king is the law;" and this will conduct us at once to the palmy days of true despotic glory-the days of Nebuchadnezzar, whose dreadful sway is thus described by Daniel: "All people, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him; whom he would he slew,

and whom he would he kept alive; whom he would he set up, and whom he would he cast down.' Such was once the government of England, now the chosen abode of legal freedom. Our lovely sovereign is as much bound by the laws as the humblest cottager in the empire. The prince, the peer, and the peasant, are on a perfect level in the presence of the law. Every British subject is equally protected with regard to life, liberty, and property. The entire people dwell within the common sanctuary of legal protection. None are excepted, none are privileged. The law is supreme. To this divine fellowship of freedom, the missionaries of Christ are introducing the nations of Polynesia. I say, the missionaries are doing this thing. Those isles were visited by the students of science in search of facts, by the conductors of commerce, in search of gain, and by the voluptuous, in quest of pleasure-the object of all these men was to find good, not to impart it. It was reserved for the missionary of the cross, not merely to visit, but to become a resident on the islands, and to sacrifice all that the world holds dear, in order to promote the people's welfare. He took with him the fundamental element of British freedom, the gospel of Christ, and the results are such as we have set forth.

ye philosophers and philanthropists, ye friends of the slave, of barbarous tribes and fettered nations, come and learn the sure method of accomplishing your object! So long as you despise the gospel, and deride its missionaries, you utterly deceive yourselves, and set aside the only instruments by which the aspect of our world can ever be transformed, and clothed in moral beauty. In vain you expect it from war, science, commerce, or legislation. That the instrument ap

pointed of God is the gospel of Christ, is established by the facts of this chapter. The true Christian missionary, once safely landed on the most benighted shore, will, sooner or later, prove "a light to lighten the Gentiles" who people it, a little leaven which will ultimately leaven the whole of the surrounding region. Despotism, with its attendant evils, always flees, in the end, before pure Christianity. They cannot long coexist; and tyrants know it! To them the missionary, with his New Testament and his types, is more terrible than an army with banners! This fact explains the conduct of all despots, both of past and present times, towards these lights of the world. The friends of missions in England can look to the West Indies, and trace every particle of the marvellous change which has been effected in the lot of its once afflicted children, to the labours of its missionaries. Yes, one of the most glorious chapters in the future history of freedom will be composed of facts which relate to the sorrowful isles of the west. Ask the now rejoicing inhabitants of those lands whether the instrument of their deliverance was the soldier or the missionary. Ask them; they know their friends! Again, we point to Africa, the land of murder and blood, the mart of human flesh for the fiends of Europe and America! There we point to trophies of freedom erected by the hands of the missionary, which are a sure pledge of deliverance for the whole population of that ravaged continent! O tell me what the genius of war has done for Africa, and I will set forth the feats accomplished by the genius of missions! Inquire of the Hottentot and the Caffre, whom they love, whom they trust, and whom they consider their best, their only friend, whether the missionary or