Page:American Diplomacy in the Orient - Foster (1903).djvu/132

 sew. They have given them an alphabet, grammar, and dictionary; preserved their language from extinction; given it a literature, and translated into it the Bible and works of devotion, science, entertainment, etc. They have established schools, reared up native teachers, and so pressed their work that now the proportion of inhabitants who can read and write is greater than in New England; and whereas they found these islanders a nation of half-naked savages, living in the surf and on the sand, eating raw fish, fighting among themselves, tyrannized over by feudal chiefs, and abandoned to sensuality, they now see them decently clothed, recognizing the laws of marriage, knowing something of accounts, going to school and public worship with more regularity than the people do at home; and the more elevated of them taking part in conducting the affairs of the constitutional monarchy under which they live, holding seats on the judicial bench and in the legislative chambers, and filling posts in the local magistracies."

The result of this work of the missionaries was seen in the new order of things in society and government. Regulations were decreed by which the outward exhibition of licentiousness and intemperance was sought to be restrained, crime and disorder punished, and the civil rights of the people enforced by judicial process. The government, which had before been a despotic autocracy, assumed a constitutional form, and the king was aided by an organized body of advisers, and later by a legislative assembly. This political reorganization was almost entirely the work of the missionaries. They were not