884 ADDRESS ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 



present moment (see, for example, "Ev. Miss. Mag*.'^ 1867, p. 300, 

 Cheever, 295) [or, I may add, our own recent information as to the 

 destructive outbreak of measles in Fiji] ; they have become more 

 able to respond to the efforts to raise their mental and moral status 

 than they were ; and, with the advance of civilisation, they have 

 beg^un to avail themselves more of the remedial ag-encies which it 

 brings with it. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the fact 

 that the Europeans themselves, in spite of many important ex- 

 ceptions, have nevertheless done a very great deal for the natives, 

 and are always doing more and more for them. Whilst in this 

 matter the English Government deserves great praise, and whilst 

 Sir George Grey has done more for the Polynesians than almost 

 any other man, the missionaries nevertheless stand in the very first 

 rank amongst the benefactors of these races, with their unwearied 

 self-sacrificing activity; and Russel ('^Polynesia/' Edinb., 1840) is 

 entirely right in saying that all the progress which the Polynesians 

 have made was really set on foot by the missionaries. They have 

 had the greatest influence upon the civilisation of the natives ; 

 they have taken their part and protected them when they could ; 

 they have further given them the fast foothold, the new fresh 

 object, motive, and meaning for their whole existence, of which 

 they stood so much in need. The Polynesians have often declared 

 to the missionaries, "If you had not come, we should have perished;" 

 and they would have perished if their country had not been so dis- 

 covered. The resources of their physical life were exhausted ; and 

 they had none of the moral nor ideal support for the needs of their 

 spiritual nature, which they stood so urgently in need of, as they 

 had already attained a grade of culture too high to allow of their 

 living without some support of that kind. It is true that ex- 

 traneous circumstances have often, especially in the outset, brought 

 about their conversion — as, for example, the authority of their 

 chiefs, the force of example, as also, on the other hand, the occur- 

 rence of misfortune, great mortality, the loss of a battle, after 

 which they wished to make the experiment of worshipping a new god 

 (Russel, pp. 886, 390). And it is also true that the missionaries 

 have introduced tbem to an exceedingly bigoted and often little- 

 elevated form of Christianity; but even this has been a fortunate 

 circumstance ; for just the comprehensibility, the plain appeal to 

 the senses, of this new religion took hold of the imagination of 



