Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/587

 EOTTJMA. — ^NATIVE AGENTS. CONCLTJSIOIT. 549 medical, branch of the Mission. They were the means of inducing a lady of the Established Church, Mrs. Warren, of Dublin, to become an annual subscriber of fifty pounds to the Fiji Mission, towards the sup- port of an Educational Establishment. May many more follow so good an example ! 3. Conclusion. — ^The reader of the foreign sketch — for it is nothing else — of the Fiji Mission history, will be ready, as he considers the means by which so much good has been effected, to look beyond the means and exclaim, " What hath God wrought ! " The change which has taken place in Fiji during the last five-and-twenty years, — a change going far beneath the broad surface over which it has extended, — pre- sents to the philosophical student of history a phenomenon which cannot be explained except by recognising the presence of a supernatural force, Almighty and Divine. Let the nature of this change be well considered. Many of the most strongly marked points which are described in these volumes, have almost or altogether disappeared from the condition and general aspect of the people. Throughout a great part of Fiji, cannibal- ism has become entirely extinct. Polygamy, in important districts, is fast passing away, and infanticide in the same proportion is diminishing. Arbitrary and despotic violence, on the part of rulers, is yieldmg to the control of justice and equity. Human life is no longer reckoned cheap, and the avenger of blood comes not now as a stealthy assassin, or backed by savage warriors, but invested with the solemn dignity of established law, founded on the word of God. Other acts, once occurring daily without protest or reproof, are now recognised and punished as crimes. Civilization has made progress : not, perhaps, so much as will be expected by those who are ignorant of what had to be removed, and what to be introduced, or who have viewed these things only as softened by distance. But the progress has been real, and such as may be ex- pected to reach, in due time, a fall development. It is surely absurd to suppose, as some seem to do, that civilization can be suddenly imposed upon a barbarous people. To try to force upon these tribes what are, after all, but the results and evidences of national improvement and culture, would be but hanging sham leaves and blossoms on a lifeless tree. The elaborate details, the decorations and adornments of the building, -vN-ill be the after care of the architect : the solid structure must first be erected ; and, before all, the foundations must be well and deeply laid, involving much hidden toil and massive masonry buried beneath the surface. At the same time, the civilization of this and other island groups