a member of the Society of Friends, who has just returned from those regions, states that they now are reduced to 110,000; a diminution of 40,000 in fifteen years. Captain Cook estimated the population of Tahiti at 200,000: when the missionaries arrived there, there were not above 8,000.
What a shocking business is this, that when Christianity has been professed in Europe for this 1800 years, it is from Europe that the most dreadful corruption of morals, and the most dismal defiance of every sound principle come. If Christianity, despised and counterfeited by its ancient professors, flies to some remote corner of the globe, and there unfolds to simple admiring eyes her blessings and her charms, out, from Europe, rush hordes of lawless savages, to chase her thence, and level to the dust the dwellings and the very being of her votaries. Shall this be! Will no burning blush rise to European cheeks at this reflection? But let us hear what was said on this subject before the British Parliament.
"It will be hard, we think, to find compensation, not only to Australia, but to New Zealand, and to the innumerable islands of the South Seas, for the murders, the misery, the contamination which we have brought upon them. Our runaway convicts are the pests of savage as well as of civilized society; so are our runaway sailors; and the crews of our whaling vessels, and of the traders from New South Wales, too frequently act in the most reckless and immoral manner when at a distance from the restraints of justice: in proof of this we need only refer to the evidence of the missionaries.
"It is stated that there have been not less than 150
