of the causes which are making the isles of the Pacific cast away their idols, and turn to the worship of the true God. The time has now passed when the finger of derision can be pointed to the Sandwich Islands, as a signal instance of the failure of missions. The narratives of missionary perseverance, selfdenial, and final success, are no longer held to be exaggerated or too highly colored. To the shame of civilized man be the melancholy fact told, that the principal obstacles to the success of the Mission in the islands, until very recently, have been found among the foreign residents, who have opposed the increase of intelligence and morality, because thereby their gains were lessened. They could no longer deceive the native in the value of the merchandise which they offered for his purchase. To their misrepresentations and falsehoods may be traced most of the erroneous impressions received by various intelligent shipmasters, which were circulated so extensively at home, to the discredit of the Mission. We wish that the list of ill-doers only comprised private citizens, and we blush to record the fact that the efforts of the government of the Islands to suppress vice and preserve decorum have been violently set at naught by an officer of our own Navy. We hope never to be compelled to record a series of outrages so disgraceful as were consequent, in January, 1826, upon the arrival of the U. S. schooner Dolphin, commanded by Lieut. John Percival, whose personal interference obliged the chiefs to suspend the laws made to restrain the licentiousness formerly practised by the crews of the foreign shipping at the Islands. The particulars of this shameful affair may be found on page 264 of Mr. Jarves's work. Happily the interference of American naval commanders has been since thrown on the side of morality and order. This is not the place, nor have we limits, to relate the various misrepresentations, the open and secret opposition, the cunningly-devised temptations, and the flagrant immorality for which foreigners and some of our own citizens are accountable. The following are Mr. Jarves's remarks: "It is an ungrateful task to be obliged to record, side by side with the benevolent efforts of civilized individuals, the diabolical attempts of others to undermine their successful labors. But the full value of the one cannot be accurately appreciated without a knowledge of the depravity of the other. In exact proportion as the mission flourished, and the doctrines of Christianity began to have a perceptible and the character of the nation, in like influence upon the acts of the government manner did the opposition of evil-loving individuals increase. Such persons, it is to be hoped, were few; but no artifice was too low for them to commit, or falsehood too gross to be circulated. In most cases, the vileness of the one, and the shallowness of the other, defeated their own intentions. As the narrative proceeds, the nature and design of the enmity to the spread of Christianity will be shown. Originating in a few worthless vagabonds, the contamination gradually spread to persons, if not of better principles, of more knowledge; and the falsities their way into journals and reviews, whose so diligently uttered by the former, found editors would have shrunk from contact with their authors, as from plague-spots, had they but known them. In no place has the triumph of the cross been more signal than at the Hawaiian islands; in none other has enmity been more bitterly manifested. Instead of adducing arguments against supposed faults of the system, or affording any tangible ground to base an attack, the characters of its advocates were assailed by the grossest calum nies, and the faith and resolutions of its converts, by the most artful designs," &c. If the islander had no better friend than the American missionary, in too than the American resident. It is many cases he had no worse enemy of the vast importance of religious causes in the gradual civilisation of the Islands. sufficient for us to allude to the fact The subject is one of the been offered for the consideration of most deeply interesting which has yet humanity. It is in our power to view and Christianity upon a narrow field; the whole contest between Paganism cided triumphantly for the cause of and, to our great joy, it has been decivilisation and the Cross. Nowhere has the whole fabric of heathenism and idolatry been demolished so effectually and in so short a space of time. Nowhere have those, whose natural position and duties should have made them the friends of the pagan, so wantonly and wickedly interfered to oppose the progress of Christianity, and nowhere have their malignant efforts been so of the hostility and alarm of them all. righteously frustrated. We have no doubt that Mr. Jarves means to be true and just, and honestly believes himself as disinterested and as free from bias as he thus pro-, fesses to be. But alas for that worst form of prejudice which is always loudest in asserting its own impartiality yes, and sincerest in believing it! In addition to these sources of trouble, and hindrance to the improvement of the Islands, has been another, within the ranks of those who ought rather to have been united in a fraternal harmony, in the sacred mission to which both were devoted, than thus arrayed in an attitude of mutual hostility, and a spirit of embittered sectarian animosity. We allude to the Catholic controversy. On this question we had at first looked to Mr. Jarves's book with a hope to find an impartial statement of its merits, in that spirit of candor and just liberality befitting the responsibility assumed by him as its historian. In this expectation we have to confess ourselves somewhat disappointed. No one, an entire stranger to the whole subject, can go through his narrative of it, without experiencing, as it seems to us, a strong reaction of distrust against the truth of a history so manifestly onesided, of a picture so exclusively composed of dazzling lights on the one side and the darkest of shades on the other. None but a mind as deeply imbued as is evidently that of the author, with that spirit of violent anti-Catholic feeling-(nay, bigotry is scarce too strong a term) so prevalent amongst most of the sects of Protestantism, can fail, as it seems to us, to feel the force of his testimony as a witness to be greatly impaired by the undisguised strength of his prejudice against the one of the parties, and the one of the sides to the controversy. Mr. Jarves puts forward in his Preface a special claim to confidence, on the score of disinterestedness in the premises, because, forsooth, he did not happen to belong to "the same sect" as the missionary body in the Islands, as if it would make much difference in the degree of justice which the Catholics would be likely to receive at his hands, in relation to a controversy vehemently sectarian and partly national, whether he found his place within one particular shade or another, of the various denominations of Protestantism. Whatever comparatively trifling variations of doctrine or discipline may erect their countless imaginary barriers of separation in the midst of them, yet, in general, these differences amongst themselves are but an emulation of animosity against the common object The leading outlines of the case are simply these, so far as we have been able to derive any just conclusions from the perusal of the conflicting statements of the antagonist parties. The Protestant Missionaries sent out by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, got the first possession of the ground, having arrived at the Islands in May, 1820, at the commencement of the reign of Kamehameha II. They at first obtained permission to remain for a single year, within which time they so far succeeded in gaining the favor of the king and the chiefs, by their excellence of character and life, and by the progress which they made in the propagation of the divine truths they came to teach, that their root was already struck too deep into the soil of this new and interesting field of missionary labor, to be ever again overthrown. They speedily acquired a controlling ascendency of influence in the counsels of the government, of which they did not fail to make the use befitting their character as ministers of the Gospel, and in harmony with the great objects of their presence there. The Mission became the principle of a new order— the animating force of a new and strong movement. It took possession of the nascent civilisation just beginning to appear, under the influence of various causes antecedent to its arrival as well as connected with its immediate labors; and while it exerted itself with a successful zeal to stimulate its development, it strove to impress upon it a strong and pervading religious character. Properly to understand the part it played, it should be borne in mind that the religion and government of the Islands have always been closely united; nor in the change in both of them (the one from the gross brutality of heathenism before prevalent to Christianity, and the other from the savage despotism of the petty kings and chiefs to a form of government not far removed now from one of constitutional freedom) could it be otherwise than that the same union should continue. Christianized by the influence of the Mission, the leading members of the government naturally sought to apply to practice, and to enforce with the usual zeal of recent conversion, the ideas of religious and moral duty which they derived both from the doctrines they thus learned, and from the lives of their good and pious teachers. Hence doubtless many severe regulations for the observance of the Sabbath, the suppression of intemperance and licentiousness, &c., against which the habits of moral laxity of many of the foreign residents, and most of the seafaring classes of men who frequented the islands, would naturally dispose them to rebel, with an angry and resentful feeling against those to whose influence they very justly attributed them. To the reports in various ways spread abroad through the agency of these influences, may be ascribed the general prevalence of the belief in the puritanical and priest-ridden character of the native government, under the controlling though subtle sway of an ambitious missionary priesthood, reproducing here on a small scale all the symptoms that have everywhere at tended the domination of similar classes of men in the political affairs of governments. That the American Mission did possess the power thus ascribed to its members, is indisputable; in the very nature of things it was inseparable from their position, and their relation to the government and people of whose growing civilisation they were the nucleus. It is not impossible, too, that they may have on some occasions made a use of it, more consistent with their own peculiarly strict notions of religious duty, than judicious or conciliatory; for we find even Mr. Jarves, their warm friend and indiscriminate eulogist, admitting respecting Mr. Bingham, (who appears to have been the most active and influential individual of the Mission), that "it must be acknowledged he possessed a tenacity of opinion, and a sectarian zeal, which at times separated him in some degree from his friends, and marred his usefulness." But with all allowance for this, and for that peculiar severity of conscientious hostility to everything tinged with a character of Roman Catholicism, which is less individual than the pervading spirit of their sect and body, it is yet abundantly evident that they have fulfilled the duties of their vocation well and worthily, as faithful servants of their Master and friends of their fellow-men; and their labors have certainly been the means, under God, of producing fruits of moral and social regeneration, on a larger scale, and of a more signal excellence and value, than seem ever to have rewarded a similar enterprise and devotion, in any case of missionary history within our remembrance. It was not likely that the Roman Catholic Church should witness the rapid progress thus making by a Protestant Mission in gaining possession of such a ground, without at least an effort to dispute so desirable a conquest, by a fair rivalry and competition of missionary enterprise. Accordingly two priests made their appearance at the Islands, on the 7th of July, 1827, from the college of Picpus in France, the one M. Bachelot, a Frenchman, and the other Mr. Short, a British citizen by birth. This event had its immediate origin in an application made to the College by a Mr. Rives, a Frenchman, of whose character no very creditable account is given by Mr. Jarves, who accompanied Liholiho on his visit to England, and from thence proceeded to France. This application was stated to be at the request of Boki, a chief of rank in attendance on Liholiho. The regency of the kingdom remained in the hands of the old queen Kaahumanu, widow of the first king, Kamehameha I., and an able and distinguished chief named Kalaimoku, with whom it had been left by Liholiho (Kamehameha II.) on his departure for England. Kalaimoku, in the figurative language of the people termed the "iron cable" of Hawaii, died on the 2d of March, 1827; the old queen, a woman of great energy and imperiousness of character, remaining sole regent. Boki, who was a brother of Kalaimoku, was vested with the guardianship of the young king. It appears that the priests never obtained formal permission to establish themselves permanently on the islands; though they were favored by Boki, and allowed to erect a house and a chapel. It was not likely that they could long remain at peace with the American Mission, or with the native government which was so entirely under their indirect control. It would seem that there was a considerable opposition party or faction in the Islands, which united all the elements of discontent generated by the rigid system of government established under the Missionary influence. The sectarian antagonism between the Protestants and Catholics, thus gradually assumed also a political tinge; and Boki, who became the chief reliance of the priests and their friends, aspiring to the regency, at one period assumed an attitude which threatened an armed revolution. The old queen, the head of the other party and of the regular government, was the firm and zealous friend of the Missionaries, of whom she is represented by the Catholics as the mere tool. In 1829, the priests lost their main support, in the person of Boki, who perished on an expedition which he undertook in quest of an island supposed to contain a rich quantity of sandal-wood, of which the Sandwich Islands themselves were by this time nearly exhausted. At about the same period, the young king began to interpose personally in the public affairs, being now in his seventeenth year. He has ever since been warm and firm in the support of the Missionaries and what may be termed their policy. The influence of the old queen Kaahumanu continued unabated, till her death in June, 1832. It was exerted in a strenuous opposition to the Catholics. Severe charges have been urged against the Mission of having stimulated this spirit, and of having been the indirect authors of the really cruel and abominable persecutions to which the Catholics were subjected. These are as earnestly denied on the other side; and the anxiety manifested to repel the imputation is an acknowledgment of the gravity of the offence, if true. We do not think that a success perfectly satisfactory attends these efforts at exculpation. The influence of the Mission could undoubtedly have prevented these persecutions, had its members seen proper adequately to exert it. The ground on which the imperious old queen justified the punishment of the Catholic converts was the law against" idolatry," a law having reference to the gross and pagan idolatry of the old superstition of the people. The habit of many of the Protestant sects of denouncing some of the 66 usages of the Roman Catholic Church as idolatry," is too well known to need remark; and there is no doubt that this mode of attack against the progress of the obnoxious intruders "As the was plied to the utmost. proselytism of natives slowly progressed and the Romish mission gave indications of permanency," writes Mr. Jarves "the Protestant missionaries, by force of argument, teaching, and all the influence they could lawfully employ, endeavored to arrest its progress. The minds of the chiefs were sufficiently established; the variable disposition of the mass was of Protestantism, and attacking the dogfeared. Sermons, defending the theology mas of the hostile church, were uttered from every pulpit; tracts gave further circulation to their opinions, and a war of discussion was commenced and actively pursued. Government lent its aid, and unfortunately for the principle, though necessarily for its support, church and state were united more closely than ever." The English consul, Mr. Charlton, who is represented as a man of profligate character, sided against the Mission throughout all this period, and contributed greatly by his influence to strengthen the "opposition." It was at last resolved by the government to expel the Catholic priests from the Islands, and an order was given to Messrs. Bachelot and Short, on the 2d of April, to depart in three months. This order, several times repeated, they continued to evade, on the pretext of inability to procure a vessel; till on 24th of December they were placed on board a small vessel belonging to the government, and landed on the shores of California. Kaahumanu died in the following June, 1833, from which time the young king, now on the throne, Kamehameha III., assumed all the responsibilities of government. On the 17th of April, 1837, the two banished priests reappeared at Honolulu, as passengers on board of a vessel named the Clementine, the property of a Mr. Dudoit, a Frenchman, though wearing English colors. A few months before there had been two vessels of war at the Islands, the one English and the other French; the commander of the former of which, Lord Edward Russel, had forced upon the king, under the threat of his guns, a treaty of which one clause permitted the residence of English subjects conforming to the laws. The king in reply to the expostulations of Captain Vaillant, the commander of the French vessel of war, against the banishment of the priests, had stated that it had been the act of the old queen, under the control of the Missionaries, and that he was willing they should return-an allegation on the Catholic side of the controversy, which is denied on the other. On their landing from the Clementine, the priests were immediately ordered to reembark, which they refused to do, the destination of her voyage not being one to which they were willing to be carried. The owner, Dudoit, refused also to receive them on board, threatening to abandon his vessel, as piratically seized by the government, if they were placed on board by force. The latter measure was, however, resorted to by the government, and the flag accordingly hauled down and the vessel abandoned, under protest and heavy claim of damages. This occurrence having taken place on the 28th of May, 1837, they remained on board, prisoners, till, on the 8th of July, the British ship of war Sulphur, Captain Belcher, arrived, followed on the 10th by a French one, the Venus, Captain Du Petit Thouars. These officers were immediately appealed to, by the two prisoners of their respective nations; and in concert they demanded their release-a claim which was earnestly contested in the assembly of chiefs, by Mr. Bingham, of the Mission, acting as interpreter. Unable to obtain their demand, the two commanders proceeded to liberate and land them by force. Consent for their stay till a favorable opportunity to depart, was obtained with extreme difficulty, with the condition that they should not in the mean time preach. Mr. Short took his departure for Valparaiso, on the 30th of October following; a few days after which, arrived another French priest, M. Maigret, who was peremptorily for bidden to land. Captain Du Petit Thouars had during his stay negotiated a treaty, in which it was stipulated that "the French shall come and go freely in all the states which compose the government of the Sandwich Islands.' This was construed by the government to refer only to French citizens of ordinary pursuits, and not to have been meant to include Catholic priests. The French consul, M. Dudoit, claimed the right for M. Maigret, under this stipulation, to land, declaring that he came to the Islands only transitorily, intending shortly to proceed on his way to another destination, and offering to guarantee that he should not give any religious instruction, nor violate any law of the country, during his stay. The government were, however, inexorable; they placed no confidence in the sincerity of these declarations; and M. Maigret was forced to purchase a small schooner, from which, on the 17th of November, he took his departure without landing for the Island of Ascension,-together with M. Bachelot, who was in an extremely reduced state of health; under which he soon sank, dying on board the small vessel in which he found himself thus compelled to embark. A truly pious, zealous, and devoted minister of Christ, his memory is justly regarded with love and veneration, by all able to do justice to those qualities in a Catholic priest, as having fallen a martyr to his faith and his mission, in the service to which he felt himself summoned by his duty, as well as commanded by his Church. Shortly after this, December 18th, 1837, an ordinance by the king was proclaimed, emphatically prohibiting the Catholic religion; forbidding the performance of any of its services, the teaching of any of its "peculiarities," or the landing or residence in the islands of any one teaching "the Pope's religion or anything similar." This was placed on the ground of its tendency to excite disturbance, and of the impropriety "that two religions be found in this small kingdom." This edict of course issued, indirectly if not directly, from the American Mission; to which in sooth it does but little credit, though its members undoubtedly acted in accordance with their conscientious convictions of duty in the service of God. There were within the following years numerous instances of cruel persecution of the Catholics, under the old statute against "idolatry;" though we see no reason to impute to the same quarter the responsibility of such measures as these. On the contrary, their counsels seem to have been positive against them. At length on the 9th of July, 1839, |