truction!
Let the savages be civilized, but civilize them with benefits, and not
with evils; and let heathenism be destroyed, but not by destroying the
heathen. The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater
part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise
extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilization is
gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism,
and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.
Among the islands of Polynesia, no sooner are the images overturned, the
temples demolished, and the idolators converted into NOMINAL Christians,
that disease, vice, and premature death make their appearance. The
depopulated land is then recruited from the rapacious, hordes of
enlightened individuals who settle themselves within its borders,
and clamorously announce the progress of the Truth. Neat villas, trim
gardens, shaven lawns, spires, and cupolas arise, while the poor savage
soon finds himself an interloper in the country of his fathers, and
that too on the very site of the hut where he was born. The spontaneous
fruits of the earth, which God in his wisdom had ordained for the
support of the indolent natives, remorselessly seized upon and
appropriated by the stranger, are devoured before the eyes of the
starving inhabitants, or sent on board the numerous vessels which now
touch at their shores.
When the famished wretches are cut off in this manner from their natural
supplies, they are told by their benefactors to work and earn their
support by the sweat of their brows! But to no fine gentleman born to
hereditary opulence, does this manual labour come more unkindly than
to the luxurious Indian when thus robbed of the bounty of heaven.
Habituated to a life of indolence, he cannot and will not exert himself;
and want, disease, and vice, all evils of foreign growth, soon terminate
his miserable existence.
But what matters all this? Behold the glorious result!--The abominations
of Paganism have given way to the pure rites of the Christian
worship,--the ignorant savage has been supplanted by the refined
European! Look at Honolulu, the metropolis of the Sandwich Islands!--A
community of disinterested merchants, and devoted self-exiled heralds of
the Cross, located on the very spot that twenty years ago was defiled by
the presence of idolatry. What a subject for an eloquent Bible-meeting
orator! Nor has such an opportunity for
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