POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
35 
scourges of the people. It nurtured indolence, and 
spread discord through their families, increased the 
abominations of the Areoi society, and the unnatural 
crime of infanticide. Before going to the temple to 
offer a human sacrifice to their gods, the priests have 
been known to intoxicate themselves, in order that they 
might be insensible to any unpleasant feelings this 
horrid work might excite. 
These causes operating upon a people, whose simple 
habits of diet rendered their constitutions remarkably 
susceptible of violent impressions, are, to a reflecting 
mind, quite sufficient to account for the rapid depopula¬ 
tion of the islands within the last fifty or sixty years. 
The philanthropist, however, will rejoice to know, that 
although sixteen years ago the nation appeared on the 
verge of extinction, it is now, under the renovating and 
genial principles of true religion, and the morality with 
which this is inseparably connected, rapidly increasing. 
When the people in general embraced Christianity, we 
recommended that a correct account of the births and 
deaths occurring in each of the islands should be kept. 
From the operation of the causes above enumerated, 
for some years even after the crimes in which they ori¬ 
ginated had ceased, the number of deaths exceeded that 
of births. About the years 1819 and 1820, they were 
nearly equal, and since that period population has been 
rapidly increasing. 
It was not till the account of deaths and births was 
presented, that we had an adequate idea of the affecting 
depopulation that had been going on; and if, for 
several years after infanticide, inebriation, human sacri¬ 
fices, and war, were discontinued, the number of deaths 
exceeded that of the births ; how appalling must that 
