SOUTH SEA 
ranee has grown up among the traders in religion there* 
that I am quite sure cannot much longer be endured. 
For I was informed by one of their chiefs who had been 
partly educated in America, that the land of the Sand- 
wich Islands had not been nearly so well cultivated 
since the arrival of the missionaries among them — nor 
had the people been so industrious ; and he explained 
the cause in this way : that the land was heavily taxed 
by the chiefs, who were the proprietors. The common 
people, who cultivated it for their support, were obliged 
to work upon it early and late to sustain themselves 
and families comfortably out of the produce, even before 
the arrival of the missionaries. But when these came, 
and allied themselves wuth the chiefs who held the land, 
and who also were the rulers of the people, their solici- 
tations and bribes induced the chiefs to frame laws by 
which the common people are obliged to attend churches 
and prayer-meetings two or three times a day, and in 
some places I believe every two or three hours, so that 
the time which was formerly allotted to labour in dig- 
ging their tarro-patches, or cultivating their tarro, and 
other food, is interfered with to such an extent, that 
numbers of them are unable any longer to cope w 7 ith the 
loss which they thus sustain, and in the end, finding 
their land become a burthen to them, they throw it off 
their shoulders, and either lead a miserable, outcast, 
wandering life, subsisting upon a scanty allowance, 
where before they enjoyed an abundance, or they go 
down to Oahoo as servants of the white residents, which 
they are willing to become for little more than their 
food. 
