THEIR LABOURS AND PROSPECTS. 57 



less determine, that the truth rests in the 

 medium. 



It cannot be denied, that from the landing of 

 the first party of British missionaries, in 1797, 

 to the present time, a constant tendency to a 

 fixed point of improvement has been evident in 

 the more favoured Polynesian nations. I say a 

 fixed point, because I believe, that after idolatry 

 has been supplanted by the Christian religion, 

 and the elements of education introduced, the 

 work will remain stationary for a time ; and 

 that a nobler superstructure can only be raised 

 by the maturing influence of many years' inter- 

 course with civilized nations. The first steps 

 have been successfully attained by the mis- 

 sionaries, at both the Society and Sandwich 

 groups, after many years of anxious toil and 

 dangerous re-action ; and their chief duty at 

 present consists in retaining the ground they 

 have gained, and in giving such intellectual im- 

 provement to the rising generation of natives as 

 circumstances may permit. And it will be no- 

 ticed, in the accounts I have given of distinct 

 islands, how soon the absence, or loss of in- 

 fluence, on the part of then* missionary in- 

 structors, causes the capricious natives to revert 

 to then* former excesses, and indifference to 



