30 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
though including among its members many dis¬ 
tinguished individuals in different states of the 
Union. 
In the autumn of 1819, a select and efficient 
band of missionaries was appointed by this society 
to establish a mission in the Sandwich Islands. 
They landed at Kairua, in Hawaii, on the 4th oi 
February, 1820, and had the satisfaction to find 
the way in a measure prepared for them, by one 
of those remarkable events which distinguish the 
eras in the history of nations, whether barbarous 
or civilized. This was, the abolition of the 
national idolatry, which, though it was closely 
interwoven with all the domestic and civil insti¬ 
tutions of every class of the inhabitants, upheld 
by the combined influence of a numerous body of 
priests, the arbitrary power of warlike chiefs, and 
the sanction of venerable antiquity, had been pub¬ 
licly and authoritatively prohibited by the king 
only a few months before their arrival. The mo¬ 
tives which influenced the monarch of Hawaii in 
this decisive measure, the war it occasioned, and 
the consequences which ensued, are detailed in 
the following narrative. The Missionaries could 
not but view it as a remarkable interposition of 
divine Providence in their favour, and a happy 
prelude to the introduction of that gospel which 
they had conveyed to their shores. They had 
naturally expected that their landing would be 
opposed by the institutions of a system, which, 
however degrading and oppressive in its influence, 
had presented more than human claims to the 
support of its adherents,—and to be withstood by 
a numerous and influential class of priests, whose 
craft would be endangered as soon as they should 
present the paramount claims of the true God to 
