60 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 



to judge by results, and give honour where honour is due. 

 From a great experience of big cities in all parts of the world, 

 I am a firm believer in the axiom that ' charity should begin 

 at home,' but it need not necessarily end there ; and, if I re- 

 member correctly, the Divine commission was to 'teach ALL 

 nations.' Divided, as those who profess a common Christianity 

 unhappily are, I cannot agree with perhaps the majority of the 

 missionaries in the Southern Seas ; but despite all differences 

 of creed, I tender them the most respectful homage when I 

 think what those men have done. 



Missionaries may have traded, missionaries may have lived 

 too luxurious lives, and perhaps there is no great approach 

 among the majority to the spirit of sainted Francis Xavier ; 

 but is not the meanest native teacher (even if he professes a 

 mutilated creed), who preaches the elements of the Sermon 

 on the Mount, a thousand times better as an advanced guard 

 of what we are pleased to call European civilisation, than any 

 of the trading scoundrels, from whose infectious blackguardism 

 Fiji is only just recovering ? The day is happily past for these 

 mission-haters, who have themselves for the most part gone to 

 answer for their conduct to a higher authority than that of the 

 Lord High Commissioner of Western Polynesia ; but the fact 

 remains that men of Anglo-Saxon lineage have been the curse 

 of the Pacific, and have caused the deaths of such men as the 

 Protestant Bishop Patteson and Commodore Goodenough. 

 The uncontrolled Fiji labour-trade of former years may not 

 have been exactly slavery, but the ruffians I have referred to 

 (Her Majesty's Government's blue-books bear evidence of their 

 infamy), not only carried on a regular slave-trade, but considered 

 murder as one of its branches. 



When I reflect on the perfect self-denial of the Marist 

 Fathers, who have left their native land for ever, to spread in 



