onfirm respect for the rights of private property. The
most valuable articles might, we are told, under ordinary circumstances
be left to its protection in the absence of the owners for any length of
time.[121] Indeed so obvious and so useful is this function of taboo
that one well-informed writer supposes the original purpose of the
institution to have been no other than the preservation of private
property;[122] and another observer, after eulogising its beneficent
effects, declares that "it was undoubtedly the ordinance of a wise
legislator."[123] But to say this is greatly to overrate the wisdom and
foresight of primitive man in general and of the Polynesians in
particular; it implies a fundamental misconception of the real nature
and history of taboo. That curious institution was not the creation of a
prudent and sagacious legislator, who devised this system of checks and
restrictions for the purpose of curbing the passions of a savage race
and inducing them to submit to the salutary restraints of law and
morality. It was in its origin, I believe, simply a crude and barbarous
form of superstition, which, like many other superstitions, has
accidentally led to good results that were never contemplated by its
ignorant and foolish votaries. It is thus that in the long history of
mankind things which to a contemporary spectator might seem to be almost
unmitigated evils turn out in the end to be fraught with incalculable
good to humanity. This experience, often repeated, enables students of
the past to look forward, even in the darkest hours, with cheerful
confidence to the future.

[121] _Old New Zealand_, by a Pakeha Maori, p. 97.

[122] _Old New Zealand_, by a Pakeha Maori, p. 94.

[123] E. Dieffenbach, _Travels in New Zealand_, ii. 100,
"Ridiculous as this custom of the _tapu_ has appeared to some,
and as many of its applications really are, it was,
notwithstanding, a wholesome restraint, and, in many cases,
almost the only one that could have been imposed; the heavy
penalties attached to the violation of its laws serving in one
tribe, or in several not in actual hostility with each other, as
moral and legal commandments. It was undoubtedly the ordinance
of a wise legislator." Compare G. F. Angas, _Savage Life and
Scenes in Australia and New Zealand_, i. 330, "Doubtless this
law is the result of some wise regulation for the protection of
property and individu