140 HOW TO LEGISLATE [PART I. 



man has at the same time become there more effe- 

 minate, and less inclined to great bodily or men- 

 tal exertion. Where the climate is so genial, clothes 

 are superfluous, and houses of a complicated con- 

 struction are not wanted. Agriculture that cor- 

 ner-stone of an advanced state of civilization. re- 

 mains in its infancy ; and the cattle, roaming at 

 large, destroy the young cocoa-nut and bread-fruit 

 trees. The milk of the cocoa-nut serves the natives 

 instead of that of the cow ; bread-fruit, bananas, 

 yams, and taro, are all highly farinaceous, and take 

 the place of the cerealia of Europe. The acquaint- 

 ance with European luxuries, and the creation 

 of artificial wants, have not made these islanders 

 healthier or happier than when they lived upon 

 the bounties of Nature. 



How different is the case with the natives of New 

 Zealand! Their country produces spontaneously 

 scarcely any indigenous articles of food ; all these 

 they have to plant, with much labour : their climate 

 is too severe to allow of their dispensing with clothes 

 or with substantially constructed houses, to obtain 

 both of which they are obliged to exercise their 

 mental and bodily faculties ; and they have, therefore, 

 become agriculturists, with fixed habitations. They 

 are not, indeed, as cleanly as the natives of the favoured 

 islands to the north, but that is a consequence of 

 their climate and their poverty. If the first contact 

 with Europeans produced an injurious effect upon 

 their health, in consequence of the entire change* 



