no hand in the reforms and improvements
inaugurated, which were the work of our Board of Health, as occasion
required and means were provided. He was not a pure man in his
relations with women, and the leprosy of which he died should be
attributed to his vices and carelessness. Others have done much for
the lepers, our own ministers, the government physicians, and so
forth, but never with the Catholic idea of meriting eternal
life.--Yours, etc.,

"C. M. HYDE."[32]

To deal fitly with a letter so extraordinary, I must draw at the outset
on my private knowledge of the signatory and his sect. It may offend
others; scarcely you, who have been so busy to collect, so bold to
publish, gossip on your rivals. And this is perhaps the moment when I
may best explain to you the character of what you are to read: I
conceive you as a man quite beyond and below the reticences of civility:
with what measure you mete, with that shall it be measured you again;
with you, at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to
plunge home. And if in aught that I shall say I should offend others,
your colleagues, whom I respect and remember with affection, I can but
offer them my regret; I am not free, I am inspired by the consideration
of interests far more large; and such pain as can be inflicted by
anything from me must be indeed trifling when compared with the pain
with which they read your letter. It is not the hangman, but the
criminal, that brings dishonour on the house.

You belong, sir, to a sect--I believe my sect, and that in which my
ancestors laboured--which has enjoyed, and partly failed to utilise, an
exceptional advantage in the islands of Hawaii. The first missionaries
came; they found the land already self-purged of its old and bloody
faith; they were embraced, almost on their arrival, with enthusiasm;
what troubles they supported came far more from whites than from
Hawaiians; and to these last they stood (in a rough figure) in the shoes
of God. This is not the place to enter into the degree or causes of
their failure, such as it is. One element alone is pertinent, and must
here be plainly dealt with. In the course of their evangelical calling,
they--or too many of them--grew rich. It may be news to you that the
houses of missionaries are a cause of mocking on the streets of
Honolulu. It will at least be news to you, that when I returned your
civil visit, the driver of my cab commented on the