and South Pacific Oceans. Where the natives are mild, gentle, docile and curious, and where abortive experiments have been made by the worthy missionaries. Of these, I shall speak here, and see whether Messieurs les Missionaries will prove my statement of facts a miserable fabrication like their own lying letters and insane journals.

I have described such a man as a missionary ought to be. Were, or are, the men sent out on the missionary business any way so qualified? No! I knew several of them personally, many more from report, and true saints of the new school they were, and in general as fair candidates for Tyburn and Botany Bay as ever was a footlink that crossed the herring-brook. They were chiefly half-bred tradesmen of the weaver-breed, ignorant of every thing but Bible knowledge, incapable of an idea beyond Scripture tactics. They knew by rote how to spiritualize the holy text to suit every occasion of fraud, chicanery and laziness. They were vain, conceited, proud, foolish, and obstinate; prone to drunkenness, full of contradiction, quarrelsome and lascivious.

Now to the proofs. Now for the progress of the divine missionaries.

In the year of the Christian imposition, 1795, the missionary's ship, Duff, Captain Thomas Wilson, commander, sailed from London with a cargo of missionary priests, bound for the Sandwich and Friendly Islands, and to visit the north west coast of America, to try if any impression could be made on the Indian tribes. They carried various toys to attract the natives, and thought, ignorant fools as they were, that a race of hardy warriors, endued with strong sense and acute perceptibility, would be pleased with beads, ribands, buttons, seals, lockets, and other trinkets, which only find acceptance in the eyes of girls, children, and highly spoiled ladies. Not one thing of value or use was sent out, but the most trifling baubles which imbecility could collect, or idiotic vanity receive, which the women and children alone accepted, and which trash, by the advice or command of their husbands, they flung on board the ship the next day. The ferocious looks, forbidding manners, and determined behaviour of these independent savages, warned the devout priests of the holy mission, that they had nothing to expect but the crown of martyrdom, and they discreetly declined the honour and glory of such mere spirituality, and sailed away to communicate the glad tidings to the more placable natives of the Society and Friendly Islands.

About twenty of these Bible and Testament heroes were, by the consent of Tomyomyo, the king of Owyhee, landed upon that island. His majesty's reception of the raggamuffins was highly. gratifying to men of their taste and very limited knowledge. He received them as schoolmasters sent by a friend who recommended them for their learning and abilities to instruct his ignorant subjects. He bestowed on each pastor two men's share of land,

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to grow yams, plantains, and terra, a hut to live in, ordered two men to attend upon them, the one to fish and the other to perform their husbandry, and told them with a smile, that the women would furnish them with that necessary article a wife with pleasure; and he hoped that they would by their precepts and good example soon make all his people happy. Captain Wilson, was commonly called the Christian, by the ship-captains who knew him abroad, chiefly in China, for his affected piety, impertinent and foolish admonitions, and constant recurrence to Testament precepts and phrases. His ship was a heavenly torment on earth, or rather water, to the seamen on board. They had prayer three times a day, and perpetual psalm-singing. The forfeit of an oath was a shilling for the first, half crown for the second, five shillings for the third, and the fourth exhibited a receipt in full for all wages due for the vessel, with loss of chest, clothing and other property on board. The captain's watch-coat was generously hung up against the after part of the mizen mast, for the benefit of the man at the helm, and was composed of a plate of copper, whereon were engraved in legible characters, the words "The Captain's Watch Coat, Faith Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Constancy, Grace, through the Lord Je sus, and good will towards men," I saw it in the Typa near Macao, where the heavenly ship got a-ground, while I, and a few other sinners, were employed in getting her afloat. I beg pardon for self; but it is worth observing by the way, that, in the course of my morning and forenoon's labour, some hasty damns escaped my unhallowed lips, which marked me for a son of Belial, and left the whole of the labour to me and the men under my authority, and when the ship was secured, or, at least, in a place of safety, the dinner prayer was said; but the hospitality of the saints could not be extended to such a reprobate as I was, and I was actually desired neither to profane their mess nor to contaminate the steerage, and my men were equally as careful not to be contaminated by them. They staid in the boat, and I read the captain's watch coat with the relish of a connoiseur for an Otho Note. My men were Musselmen, strongly tinctured with Bramanism; but although they would not eat with me, they, with modest hospitality, sent one up to place some of their kedgeree on the capstan for my acceptance. Take that as a real picture of a brace of religions. Captain Wilson exhorted his pious gang of priests to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves, and committed them cheerfully to the protection of the fourth Christian god, Providence, and the hospitality of the savages; among whom, instead of doing as they were advised and as sense and reason would have dictated, they were, in a little time, notorious for being as indolent as oxen, as stupid as asses, as vain as peacocks, as mischievous as monkeys, and as lascivious as goats-foolish, curious, and rapacious. Every man had two or three wives, and whatever they

saw which suited their fancy, they claimed without scruple, and obtained without difficulty; for the good-natured islanders humoured them like children, and the magnanimous monarch smiled at their propensities, however puerile or unreasonable, and indulged them to a point of weakness, often observing to some of his courtiers, that they would learn better in time, and that his people and they would come to a good understanding:-that they were strangers, who had come a great way to do his people good, and that they must have their own way until the manners and customs of the country became known and familiar to them. The king imagined, that much good would accrue from the conversation and instruction of men who had come so far to educate his ignorant people, men who had come disinterestedly from the greatest nation in the world, the seat of art and science, the cradle of liberty, the foster-mother of freedom, the land of tolerance, the asylum of the distressed, the foe of tyranny and oppression, the friend, promoter and patron of truth, trade, religion and happiness. He patiently waited in ardent hope of seeing schools established, infant factories set on foot, mechanic arts set in motion, and a resemblance of trade, learning and industry, dawning under, the pleasant shade of plantain, cocoa, and palm trees. But he was most woefully mistaken; the arts laid dormant, science slept far from the pleasing shores of Owyhee, and the square, and the plummet, and the level, the plane, the shuttle, and the pen, were doomed to experience the most mortifying neglect, and wait for a more propitious era to call them into life and action. Even rum, of which the wretches were so fond, that they would have sold themselves to their devil to procure it, they either wanted the skill or industry to make, although the finest sugar canes in the world grow there in abundance.* Their proceedings were truly worthy of being recorded in a Missionary Journal, and shall in part, be related by their unworthy memorialist. The voluptuous savages of the islands listened with strange pleasure, and the most earnest attention, to the wonderous tales, astonishing events, and surprising miracles, related by their semi-barbarous, ill-informed, half fanatic, half lunatic, half foolish and half knavish instructors; every one of whom, according to his fancy, imagined himself a Saint Antony, a Saint Paul, a Saint John or a Saint James; and if they did not indeed style themselves evangelists, they, at least, understood themselves to be privileged apostles of Christ, sent forth to preach the word which was good, to such as would hear it, yea, to the forlorn children of sin, the sons of the great ocean; on whom their prayers and preachings were to fall as the dews of heaven on the burning desert, or as the latter rain

An old scorbutic seaman left there for the benefit of his health, distilled the first spirit ever made on the island, from the juice of the cane, with a curious contrivance of a still made with an iron pot and an old gun barrel.

upon the parched earth. They recounted the mode and process of the creation; the manufacture of the man out of clay by the divine artist, and the curious and somewhat barbarous method of modelling and working the perfection of female form and beauty out of a crooked bone, torn from the bleeding side of the male animal, as if Omnipotent power could find nothing else of which to make a woman. They descanted on the garden of Eden, the primitive condition of our first parents, their happy state, fall and expulsion from paradise; because the woman Eve stole and ate the forbidden fruit! The first persecution and murder for religion, the lapse into sin, which brought on the destruction of the world by a deluge of water; the miraculous salvation of Noah and his family in the wonderful ark; the production of the heavenly sign of the rainbow, and God's merciful promise not to destroy the world again by water, but to burn it like a dried clod with fire; the cursing of Ham, which made the Ethiopian black, woollyheaded and insensible; the call of Abraham; the mighty kingdom, murders, robberies, and other atrocities, the splendour, captivity, restoration and final dispersion of the Jews; the promise of the Messiah, and finally the birth of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, the prince of peace and redeemer of the world, whose devoted servants and humble unworthy ministers they were, sent by him to proclaim the glad tidings of great joy and eternal salvation unto all men, through grace and faith in the Lord Jesus and the blood of the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world. To these stories, which, to be sure, are something dark, mysterious and unintelligible to men of information and any thing like cultivated sense, the simple and credulous natives of the Isles listened with wondering attention, and thought themselves blest in hearing such strange narratives. They devoured the tales with all the voracity of ignorant wonder-hunters. They repeated them to each other with scrupulous imbecility. They relied on the text, were taught the dread of deviating from the sacred original; believed the whole fable an eternal truth; imagined the vagabond Missionaries inspired men, and paid them a respect approximating to adoration. The well-chosen teachers of the mission began to work on their own bottom; to speak from the fulness of their own understanding; to comment on the holy text; to descend from theory to practice; to realise the blessings of the gospel dispensation; to show the true worth of rectified Christianity; for here was an excellent soil, unadulterated with a variety of creeds, and a people docile, curious, and wishing for information. As there was no dogmatic rule given to them from the superiors, they must act according to the quantity of their own wisdom. From their extreme ignorance, stupidity, and bigotry, the Missionaries were reduced some degrees below the barbarians whom they taught. They were unable to form any rational code or mode of proceeding; their discourse was incon

grous, desultory, unmeaning, and inconclusive, and they inculcated the pernicious and' imposing principles of contemptible levelling. They taught that all men are born free, and that subordination to any other power but that of the Lord Jesus and the Lord Jehovah was foul, false, and idolatrous: that, in the eye of Omnipotence, all were alike, and that to obey the commands of any man was to become a slave to sin against God; to relinquish salvation and to incur the penalty of damnation hereafter. In short, the only ideas which the Missionary fools seemed to have were a confused notion of the absurd, equalizing principle, called levelling, and which they only knew, from the ravings of the devout, or rather deceitful railer against Deism; for they never dreamed of the Materialists, and only saw the Anti-christ at a distance, through the phantasmagorian medium of the Apocalyptic telescope. Upon these principles, they harangued the people, never remembering what they said at first, often contradicting the first with the last part of their discourse. They gave lectures, but their forte was prayer, where-digressive piety can roam, and the devotion of shut or turned up eyes, and repeated O Lords! declare the sentiments and vouch for the sanctity of the preacher. The King and the Chiefs paid very little attention to the prophets, at first; but let the people, the women in particular, listen and edify by the fervid exhortations of the divine Missionaries. The deluded natives heard, for the first time, with wonder, that they were slaves; that their gracious king was a tyrant; their chiefs his tools and oppressors; all power and authority usurpation, and that mankind without the assistance of the Lord Jesus must be damned to all eternity. Some of the Chiefs, from time to time, went to hear the doctrines delivered by the sages, and found themselves bewildered, between their ancient customs, the new duties of faith, belief, and obedience imposed on them. The curious Christian arithmetic of one being three, and three being one, the metaphysics of the Roman Catholic Church; the predestination of the Presbyterians, and the consubstantiation of the law-established Church, were so jumbled together by the learned Missionaries, that they puzzled the poor natives; and as they must believe or be damned, the least they could do was to doubt, and when the Chiefs began to doubt, the common slaves began to rebel. Before the coming of the Missionaries to Owyhee, the people were happy; but after their descent on the Island, the case was altered" with a wanion." Happiness forsook the shore; for it is the principal business and chief end of religion to destroy all earthly felicity, harmony, love, order, and fellowship, and to substantiate in their stead, doubt, disorder, hatred, malice, strife, and discord.

After the devout priests had told the aforesaid stories, they began to make inferences, to frame doctrines, and to establish a mode of true worship, not to be deviated from under pain