from white residents. There is also a college, of which a Mr Andrews is principal; and the proficiency of the scholars in engraving, chiefly charts, is pronounced to be creditable.

This does not exactly accord with the 'miserable and dirty appear'ance of the natives. Among other matters of increasing refinement and luxury, if not of improvement, he describes a splendid funeral of a certain Princess Kinau, at which were about four hundred troops well dressed in white uniforms, whose evolutions were admirable; twenty officers, in scarlet, composed the King's bodyguard. The concourse of well-dressed females in black silk mourning astonished me; I am quite satisfied they equalled the ' number of troops. Vast numbers lined the road. Many shed 'tears, and some really wailed in earnest.' The finery, the dresses of the troops and of the ladies, and the decorum of the ceremony in the church, hardly bear out the captain's notions of retrogradation;' much less does the orphan school, which is under the direction of Mr and Mrs Johnson, who are said to be devoted to their charge; the former having resigned his post as missionary, that Board, he says, having decided it did not come within their scheme or authority- this word being the key'stone of missionary zeal.'

What he means by this we pretend not to know. What the plan of the American missionaries at the Sandwich Islands may be, he gives us no further information; but we know that in the establishments of schools, by the English missionaries, in the Society, the Friendly, and the Navigators' Islands-they not only pay great personal attention to education, but are constant in the superintendence of the native teachers. In the school in question there are sixty pupils of each sex, taught separately— the boys in the morning, the girls in the afternoon; they are all instructed in the language of the two countries, and in sound moral habits and religious duties; and we are told that many of them exhibit great talent and cleverness. The females are taught the English language and needlework, and instructed in domestic concerns and other useful occupations.

Evidently Captain Belcher is no friend to the missionaries; the state of slavery they create is such, and their exaction of labour from the people so great and constant, that they have scarcely time left for respiration or recreation. In fact, he ascribes to their tyranny the great diminution he finds in the population; nay more, in the diminution of ships that frequent the islands. We do not believe either the one or the other to be the case. The number of ships, as we know from better authority, have been and are very much increasing; and the total cessation of human sacrifices, and the slaughter of multitudes of infants,

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more especially females, is certainly not calculated to diminish the population. But drunkenness is a common vice, which they most assuredly were not taught by the missionaries; though their cutaneous disorders may be occasioned from the disuse of constant sea-bathing, which they formerly indulged in, and when, he tells us, they were apparently free, happy, and cheerful; but a miserable contrast remains-they are now 'chap-fallen and miserable.' He admits that the female part of society, generally speaking, may be considered gentle and amiable in their demeanour and disposition; tractable and quick in receiving instruction. In almost every case where a foreigner has married a native woman, her conduct has been peculiarly correct, and their children promise to be ornaments to the society of Oahu.' On the whole, then, we are of opinion that though the American missionaries, and we believe that few if any other are to be found at the Sandwich Islands, may not have gone to work in the best possible manner; that they may have exacted too much, and assumed an authority over the people, not excepting the King himself, and perhaps may not have taken the most advisable means of inculcating the principles of the Christian religion-yet their exertions have no doubt tended to the softening of the manners, improving the morals, enlightening the minds, and, on the whole, bettering the general condition of the islanders. This we know to be the case from other quarters.

An event has recently occurred, and appears in a printed account in the English and Hawaian (Oahuian) languages, of a demand made by Lord George Paulet, commanding H.M.S. Carysfort, for the provisional cession of the Sandwich Islands to Great Britain, in consequence of some attachment placed on the property of Mr Consul Charlton, and other grievances and complaints on the part of British subjects against the government of these islands; and that this proceeding was followed by a threat of an immediate attack from the ship upon the town of Oahu, at four o'clock the following day, if certain demands, made by Lord George to the King, were not complied with. The threat, we think, was imprudent, and not called for on such an occasion. With the demand thus peremptorily made, the King could only give his compliance; but, in doing so, he thinks it right to declare, that as it has never been our intention to insult her Majesty the Queen, or injure any of her estimable subjects, we must do this under protest, and shall embrace the earliest opportunity of representing our case more fully to her Britannic Majesty's government, through our ministers, trusting in the magnanimity of the sovereign of a great nation, which we

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have been taught to respect and love; and we shall then be 'justified.'

His Majesty, therefore, cedes to Lord George Paulet, for the Queen of Great Britain, the provisional government of the Sandwich Islands; with the reservation of the cession being subject to any arrangement made by his representatives in England. As may readily be supposed, Lord Aberdeen unhesitatingly declared to those representatives, that any such occupation was an act entirely unauthorized by her Majesty's government; and that, on the contrary, her Majesty had determined to recognize the independence of the Sandwich Islands, under their present chief. That, however, it must be distinctly understood, that the British government equally intends to engage, and if necessary to compel, the Chief of the Sandwich Islands to redress whatever acts of injustice may have been committed against British subjects, either arbitrarily, or under the false colour of lawful proceedings. That, while affording due and efficient protection to aggrieved British subjects, the consuls and naval officers employed in the Pacific were enjoined to treat the native rulers with forbearance and courtesy, and to avoid interfering harshly, or unnecessarily, with the laws and customs of the native governments.

Lord Aberdeen has further declared it to have been the desire of the British government, that the intercourse of its public servants with the native authorities of the Sandwich Islands should rather tend to strengthen those authorities, and give them a sense of their own independence, than to make them feel their dependence upon foreign powers, by the exercise of unnecessary interference;-that it has not been its purpose to seek to establish a permanent influence in those islands, at the expense of that enjoyed by other powers: it desires only that other powers should not exercise there a greater influence than that possessed by Great Britain.

This sound doctrine, moral as well as political, will, we may hope, afford a useful lesson to M. Guizot, in applying it to the proceedings of his countrymen at the Marquesas and the Society Islands; to which we shall presently have occasion to advert. It may also serve to abate the furious attacks of our transatlantic brethren on this occasion, who, in no measured terms of abuse, accuse the British government of an all-grasping disposition to plant colonies in every part of the world. If priority of discovery authorized possession, which alone it does not; but if cession of territory made by legitimate authority sanctions possession, which it does, then the Sandwich Islands might long ago have been annexed to the British crown-a formal

cession of them having been made to the King of Great Britain in consideration of services rendered by Captain Vancouver, before whom the grateful Chief, in presence of the Erries and the assembled multitude, made a solemn declaration to that effect; and ever since that period the natives have considered themselves under the immediate protection of Great Britain.

But, supposing the charge of all-grasping to be true, what prevented us from establishing colonies in every part of the Pacific, and on the northern and western coasts of America? Instead of

which, what did we do? We gave up Nootka Sound and its islands, which were ceded to us by Spain; we left the Falklands a derelict in the ocean, also ceded to us by that power; and, though conscious of the value of those islands for their many fine harbours, their favourable position, and rich surrounding fishing-ground, we occupied them only a very few years. New Zealand has been taken possession of by us, 'tis true, but only to prevent general confusion and destruction of human life, in consequence of multitudes of our countrymen, some by force and some by fraud, getting possession of large tracts of land from the natives. It has thus, in reality, been forced upon us, and we believe most reluctantly, and contrary to the wish of the government. The finest, and one of the largest islands. in China, Chusan, its position facing the centre of the extensive eastern coast of that great Empire, and contiguous to its most wealthy commercial cities, though ours in right of conquest, was given up by us; and we were content to receive in lieu of it the barren rock of Hong-Kong, rejecting every other fertile island in the same estuary, of which it is the most worthless; and we limited our demands of permission to trade at four ports only on the eastern coast.

But the Americans are the last people in the world to accuse us of a grasping disposition to seize upon new acquisitions of territory. That they should feel sore at being superseded in the protection of the Sandwich Islands, which they had in fact usurped, is natural enough; that they should be desirous of continuing that influence which they have acquired over the King and authorities of the Sandwich Islands, is not to be wondered at. These islands are, of all others in the Pacific, the most advantageously placed as a commercial and naval station, as regards the intercourse with the west coast of North America, the Philippine Islands, Japan, and China. As a station for the whale fishery, they are of more importance to America than to any other nation. The number of their whaling ships employed in the Pacific is more than double that of all the other maritime nations, whether engaged in the sperma

ceti fishing, extending through all parts of the Pacific as far as the coast of Japan, or in that for the black whale in all the northern parts of this ocean, from the Aleutian Islands to Behring's Strait; and for both these fisheries the Sandwich Islands afford most convenient ports of refuge and refitment.

The British whale fishery, of both kinds, has been, for several years past, much on the decline; and these islands supply so few articles, and those only to a small extent for commercial purposes, that they were not likely to create in the British government any desire to possess them; and an order has been given for their restoration. The Americans may therefore be satisfied, and continue to carry on the sandal-wood trade, which was the principal article for the China market, but now nearly exhausted. Sugar plantations are, undoubtedly, on the increase; rice, maize, and millets, plantains, bananas, yams, and the sweet potato, are abundantly produced. The silkworm has recently been introduced; but some of these articles are in such small quantities, as not to hold out any sanguine hopes of a lucrative or extensive commerce. It is somewhat whimsical, and augurs no great share of moderation or modesty, that a nation, brought into existence only about half a century ago, and which, by its grasping propensities, has swallowed up nearly the half of a vast continent, and will not be satisfied until she has got the whole, so that its two shores may be washed by the Atlantic on one side, and the Pacific on the other;-that such a nation should talk of the grasping propensity of others!

After a long coasting tour, Captain Belcher made for the Marquesas Islands, and anchored in Anna-Maria Bay, in the Island of Ruhahiva, not a little surprised at the entire want of curiosity on the part of the inhabitants. Neither king, nor chief, nor people came near him. They were busily employed, it seems, in preparing to make war on one of the other islands. He soon, however, got sight of the chief, and at once describes him as imbued with ingratitude and every bad feeling; and that revenge, -sulky, moody revenge alone-actuated him in undertaking the present war, in the prosecution of which the captain's endeavours to stop him proved ineffectual. Captain Belcher evidently knows little or nothing of the people of these islands. Indeed, how should he? In one place he describes them, from personal observation, as well-disposed and easily managed,' which is a character very different from that given to them by most voyagers. In another place, indeed, he calls them half, if not ' entire, cannibals.' In this, however, he is not singular. Krusenstern, a sober sensible Russian, has proclaimed them, from accounts given him by an Englishman and a Frenchman resi