This Is To Be
Inferred From His Concluding Remarks, Which, Besides, Exhibit So Fair
A Specimen Of Just Indignation And Regret, As May Deserve To Be
Offered To The Reader's Notice.
"If," says he, "in spite of
appearances, our conclusions should prove erroneous, it is another
crime added to the
Score of civilized nations, which must make their
memory execrated by the unhappy people, whom they have poisoned.
Nothing can in the least atone for the injury they have done to
society, since the price at which their libidinous enjoyments were
purchased, instils another poison into the mind, and destroys the
moral principles, while the disease corrupts and enervates the body. A
race of men, who, amidst all their savage roughness, their fiery
temper, and cruel customs, are brave, generous, hospitable, and
incapable of deceiving, are justly to be pitied, that love, the source
of their sweetest and happiest feelings, is converted into the origin
of the most dreadful scourge of life." In this last paragraph, there
is reason to imagine Mr F. has somewhat overstepped the modesty of
both history and nature - the former, by too high commendation of the
New Zealanders, who, whatever merit they may claim on other grounds,
can scarcely be said, at least if facts are to be trusted, to be
incapable of deceiving; and the latter, in ascribing greater influence
to love among these savages, than perhaps will ever be found
realised in such a condition of our nature. One cannot believe, that
so philosophical an enquirer should impute much efficacy as a source
of happiness to the mere brute passion; and it is equally unlikely
that so acute an observer should discover any thing more refined than
such an appetite in the sexual intercourse among so rude a tribe.
Probably then his language is fully more poetic than becomes the sober
narrator. This, indeed, is nowise uncommon with him, as the reader
perhaps is already convinced. But this very circumstance, it is
obvious, is to his advantage as a writer. - E.
[4] "The uncomfortable season of the year, the many contrary winds,
and the total want of interesting incidents, united to make this run
extremely tedious to us all, and the only point we gained by it, was
the certainty that no great land was situated in the South Sea about
the middle latitudes." - G.F.
[5] "The spirits of all our people were much exhilarated in proportion
as we approached to the tropics, and our sailors diverted themselves
with a variety of plays every evening. The genial mildness of the air
was so welcome to us, after a long absence from it, that we could not
help preferring the warm climates as the best adapted for the abode of
mankind." - G.F.
An observation of this sort, the evident result of experience, is
worth a thousand treatises, in shewing how much man is the creature of
circumstances and situation, and how justly his feelings, and of
consequence his thoughts, are modified by climate and weather.
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