370 CATHOLIC PRIESTS IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. [1838. 



erally with discretion, for the benefit of the community. They 

 employed every means to keep the chiefs in what they considered 

 the right path, and to conciliate the young. Schools were opened 

 wherever scholars could be found ; and the Bible, in the language 

 of the islands, was placed in the hands of all who could read it. 

 Laws restraining drunkenness and other vices were proposed to the 

 government and adopted : in 1 S38, the importation of spirituous 

 liquors was prohibited ; and, in 1840, a written constitution, also 

 the work of the missionaries, exhibiting much wisdom and knowl- 

 edge of the world on their part, was subscribed by the king and 

 his principal nobles. 



In these endeavors to raise a barbarous people to civilization, 

 and to place their country among Christian states, the American 

 missionaries were constantly opposed and thwarted by their own 

 fellow-citizens and the subjects of other nations, who resorted to 

 the islands for the purposes of trade, or of refreshment, after long 

 and dangerous voyages. The precepts of a religion enjoining self- 

 denial in all things could not find favor among such persons ; to 

 whom its apostles became ^objects of hatred, as the destroyers of 

 all their pleasures. Bickerings took place between the two par- 

 ties : the missionaries were assaulted with sticks, and stones, and 

 knives, all which they fearlessly confronted, rather than yield a 

 foot of the ground already occupied ; and the young king was 

 daily subjected to complaints from sea captains and consuls on 

 the one side, and to remonstrances from his spiritual advisers on 

 the other. That the latter carried their restrictions too far, con- 

 sidering the circumstances, there is reason to believe ; for, though 

 no defence can be made for the practices which they reprobated, 

 yet many of them can never be prevented by means compatible 

 with the enjoyment of civil liberty ; and it may be neither prudent 

 nor just to set a mark on all who are guilty of them. 



The American missionaries had to encounter greater difficulties 

 from a different source. Other laborers entered the vineyard. In 

 1827, two Roman Catholic priests, Messrs. Short, an Irishman, and 

 Bachelot, a Frenchman, arrived in the islands, and engaged in the 

 conversion of the natives to their form of Christianity. They 

 were, of course, regarded with unfriendly eyes by the Protestants, 

 and particularly by the pious regent Kaahumanu, to whose faction 

 they were opposed ; and, through her influence, they were at 

 length, in 1831, expelled from the islands, on the grounds that 

 they were idolaters, and worshipped the bones of dead men. A 



