Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/459

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 * and the system of espionage and development of hypocrisy and deceit resulting from such a system may well be imagined, or, if not comprehended, may be observed to-day among the natives of the Ellice and Gilbert Islands.

Having given Tahiti a code of laws, the missionaries proceeded to write out the plan of a "constitutional monarchy" and a "parliament" patterned upon that of England, but Pomare and the high chiefs would have none of it, and the scheme could not be thrust upon the natives until after the death of the king in 1821; when owing to his son Pomare III. being an infant, a "regency" was established and the power of the missionary party was much augmented, although always opposed by the conservatives under Tati, chief of Papara.

Thus in less than a decade were the Tahitians driven over the road of political and social progress that Europe had toiled a thousand years to traverse. The natives were forced to harken to the voices of men of an alien race whose traditions differed wholly from their own, and who looked with ill-concealed contempt upon the religion, folk-lore and arts of old Tahiti, forgetful of the fact that there was much in native culture that was good and should have been encouraged as a basis for future development.

Perhaps the saddest mistake that has been made in the universal attempt to introduce our civilization among the simpler races has been the destruction of almost all that once was theirs in the hope that things of our own creation might arise. Instead, the natives have lost much and gained but little. Under friendly direction, the wonderful