POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
443 
sought for as an opportunity for the commission of 
crime. 
By recommending the omission of capital punish- 
nients, we avoided this evil, and, regarding the peculiar 
circumstances of the nation, were in hopes thereby in¬ 
directly to elevate the tone of moral feeling, and improve 
the sensibilities, of a people emerging from a state of 
barbarism, in which murder, and retaliated murder, had 
not only been familiar, but committed with brutal 
satisfaction. 
The existence of a number of islands uninhabited, but 
capable of cultivation, and from the cocoa-nut trees grow¬ 
ing on their borders, and the fish to be found near their 
shores capable of furnishing the means of subsistence, 
and yet too remote to allow of the convicts returning, 
or proceeding to another island in any vessel they could 
construct, appeared to afford the means of answering' 
every end of public justice. The community would be 
as safe from future injury, as if the offenders had been 
executed; and we had but little apprehension, that a life 
of perpetual solitude, and necessary labour, would be 
regarded by many as more intolerable and appalling than 
speedy death. 
We have always regarded it, as less difficult to render 
laws, once established, more sanguinary, than lenient 
afterwards. Another consideration, by which we were 
also influenced, was, the season to exercise repentance or 
supplication for mercy, which it would afford the 
criminal, before he was called to the bar of the Almighty. 
To the offender this was most important, and as it could be 
bestowed without danger to the donors, we were always 
desirous that it should be granted. No opportunity for 
observing the practical effects of this law has yet occur- 
