LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
o57 
It is a singular trait in the character of this particular tribe 
of the Esquimaux people, that if they commit a theft, they very 
shortly after restore the stolen property of their own accord, as 
if they had repented of the act, and were willing to make every 
restitution in their power for the crime, which they have com¬ 
mitted. It is also not less singular, that the stolen property was 
very seldom brought back by the thief himself, nor by one of his 
own sex, but that their wives were generally selected for this 
ungracious and unpleasant duty. The question might be moot¬ 
ed, whether the women were naturally in possession of a 
greater quantity of honesty than the men, and exercised their 
influence over them, in order to induce them to return any articles 
that they had purloined; or whether the restoration of them 
proceeded from a direct compunction of conscience on the 
part of the thief, and being ashamed to restore the article 
himself, he selected those under his controul, to perform the 
duty for him. The latter hypothesis is not likely to be the 
case amongst a rude and savage people, who scarcely know 
how to draw a line between a right and a wrong action, or 
to determine the principles on which either of them is found¬ 
ed. The meum and tuum of civilized life were known amongst 
them but in a very subordinate degree, and in attaching the 
property of others to themselves, they considered that they 
were only acting up to the universal law of nature, which 
tells a human being to promote his own happiness, without 
stopping on the way to consider minutely the means, by which 
that happiness can be obtained and secured. 
We know that it is dangerous ground to tread upon, but we 
cannot shut our eyes to the experience, that the shades of moral 
guilt, are as diversified as the people, by whom it is committed, 
and that an act, which by the natives under one particular 
degree of longitude is branded with infamy and perpetual dis¬ 
grace is in a few degrees further to the northward or the south¬ 
ward, actually enjoined upon them by the ministers of their 
religion, as the very test and ordeal of the strength and efficacy 
of their faith. The standard of moral guilt amongst the Esqui¬ 
maux, and particularly amongst those, who were in daily inter- 
