being undervalued and doomed to all the hardship in the economy

of life.

The aristocratic principle has found its way (for it inheres in human nature) to this far-off fragment of the earth, where ancient patricians and modern peerage had never been heard of. But here it is remarkable, that the thing is not a contrivance for exemption from being useful; for the chiefs work in the plantations, gardens, and manual employments, as hard as, and along with, the commonalty and serfs. How such an anomaly can have happened is rather wonderful. Is it that they have been less arrogant than their 'order' elsewhere, on the strength of rank, or that the plebeians have been able and had the sense to keep them down? It is not that little value is set on noble descent; it affects materially the regulations of society, especially in the affair of marriage. If we recollect right, a chief may take a wife of inferior condition without damage to his station; but when a lady of quality accepts a man of the lower order she raises him, indeed, but in the same degree herself descends. The son of such a marriage appears to inherit the mother's original rank, for with all freedom of speech and manner, he will remind his father that he is of finer quality. Though the chieftain rank is principally by descent, a man who is natively 'nobody,' may attain it by distinguished military exploits. There is a slave-class, consisting chiefly of captives and their descendants. Numerous runaways of this class have collected themselves into a sort of tribe, in an out-of-the-way district, to which the debasement peculiarly incident to their condition has accompanied their liberty.

Hideously savage and repulsive as the character of these islanders stands out in our author's representation, verified by numerous narratives and anecdotes, he is, nevertheless, confidently sanguine as to what they may come to be at no distant time. He is strong in the opinion of both their capability of a renovated condition, and their aptitude for it. They are far from that lumpish impregnable grossness which fixes down, as by a law of gravitation, the state of some of the outcasts of humanity, to remain the same from generation to generation. They are naturally intelligent, inquisitive, observant, of ready apprehension, and flexible temper. They are quick to perceive the advantage of European arts, implements, and modes of operation, which they have a facility in imitating and adopting. Their spirit of traffic, knavish and thievish, no doubt, and specially intent on obtaining the means of effective warfare, will gradually conduce, by their trade with Europeans, to a multiplication of their wants and tastes, and tend to transfer their passion for guns and powder to objects more akin to peace and civilization. Their present care and neatness in the cultivation of their garden-grounds, afford some assurance

they can be industrious. The vast nuisance of their superstition is not, we think, of a nature the most difficult to be abated. It is of a coarse consistence by what we may call its poverty of dogmas. It exists in one rude fallacy of the imagination, instead of being radicated in intellectual and abstract principles; it cannot, therefore, have any thing like the tenacity of the Asiatic paganisms, with their systematic order of speculative doctrines, to be complicated with and pervert all thinking on all subjects. It is a superstition which, when begun to be thrown off, may soon be wholly thrown off; since, though it does, as we have before observed, maintain a comprehensive tyranny over the people's feelings and actions, it is by one bare tangible form of delusion that it does so. A few notorious instances of evident impunity in defying and scorning the atuas and their priests, will do much toward a riddance of the imposition and the bondage; as in the case of the heroic native female in the Sandwich Islands, who descended, alone, in the sight of an anxious multitude halting between two 'opinions,' into the great volcano, to challenge with insult the dreaded god of fire in his own domain, on the very edge of his glowing lava. The emancipation will be assisted by the conviction, acknowledged by these pagans, of the superior power of the Englishmen's God, who makes them invulnerable to the power and malice of theirs. All power sinks in estimation when seen in the presence and in awe of a greater power.

Already considerable numbers of English have found their way into these fine islands; some to be located, many to traverse, trade, or play the villain, among the natives. The consequence is a balance of good and evil, with a very decided tendency to a predominance of the latter; a certainty that it will and must predominate, unless prompt measures be adopted by this country to prevent it. Our author asserts pointedly and repeatedly, that the character of the natives, especially of the females, has become much vitiated (vitiated from that of the savage state!) by communication with the English. The country is becoming infested with deserters from ships, and miscreants escaped from the convict colony. These are fast creating a pestilent compost of the vices of civilization, preposterously so called, with indigenous ones of the savages. Some of the masters and crews of trading ships have committed the most abominable iniquities. Mr. P. relates (vol. ii. p. 113) a piece of infernal treachery and cruelty perpetrated by the captain of a ship from Port Jackson, of the name of Stewart. Information was sent to the authorities at Sydney; there was some semblance of a process about it; but it was thought proper to let him go off from that port with impunity, in the same vessel in which the horrid transaction had taken place.

It is but little that, on the wide scale, the mischiefs done by the

numerous English reprobates can be countervailed by the missionaries of the Church and Wesleyan Societies, judicious and zealous as their exertions are testified to be. Mr. P. insists, urgently, on the necessity of a formal enterprise of colonization, armed with a strong official power, to exercise a coercion over the English propagators of vice and ruin; to protect the natives while endeavouring to civilise them; and to promote cultivation and commerce on a large regular plan; having, in the first instance, obtained by purchase an extensive portion of land. He asserts that such an occupancy would be very acceptable to many of the natives; who can understand that it would be a great benefit to have European improvements introduced among them; to have a traffic secured on equitable regulations; and even to have put over them, or at least to have among them, a foreign authority, able to interpose for the repression of the disorders which are rapidly working their destruction.

Under the auspices of such an establishment, to some extent lords of the soil, with great maritime resources and facilities, and gradually diffusing a mitigating and pacifying influence among the barbarous population, our author thinks the country would be a fine field for emigrants. He expatiates on its fertility, the adaptation of its various climates to all the vegetable productions of necessity or luxury; its noble forests, its thickets of flax growing without cultivation; its beautiful scenery; its commodious harbours. It is placed in strongly advantageous contrast with all but a very minor portion of the Australian continent; of which it is mortifying to find so vast a proportion doomed to perpetual sterility for want of water; while certain tracts warn off all but the moveable scantling of human existence, by a liability to transient deluges.-It is mentioned in favor of New Zealand that it is fitted to be an advantageous point or centre of connexion between our already established colonies and the numerous islands of the Pacific Ocean.

Mr. P. does not take any pains to obviate the fearful apprehensions that might arise in the minds of persons looking to emigration, at the thought of seeking a home in the midst of such a ferocious race. But he assumes, with a facility and confidence which we wish we could share, that these formidable neighbours will speedily divest themselves of their infamous habits; will renounce their favorite amusement of wholesale and retail assassination; will addict themselves with a ready good will to agriculture, the mechanic arts, and traffic; will generally, within a generation or two, learn the English language; and will sweep away their trumpery of atuas, priests, conjurers, and that vexatious annoyance of the taboo, which is encountering every poor mortal at every turn. They are ambitious of acquiring something of what gives the Europeans so evident a superiority. And our author

has seen some of their performances in the nicer parts of carpentry-work, which excelled those they imitated, and greatly elated the vanity of the workmen. Numbers of them are employed in the South Sea whaling and trading vessels; and soon become as competent to the service, in all its parts, as any other

hands on board.

It is highly satisfactory to see in forward preparation, on a respectable scale, and under liberal and powerful patronage, such a scheme as our author recommends. To be sure, we have already colonies more than enough for the purposes of exhibiting bad government, draining the national treasury, instituting episcopal sees, and rendering us vulnerable at so many points to any enemy hereafter powerful at sea. But one really cannot help being sorry that so fine a tract of earth should be worse than useless on the planet, so capable and reclaimable a race of creatures abandoned to destruction, and a large portion of our own population, the while, in desperate competition for bits of ground to subsist

upon.

We ought to have noticed more expressly that our author always speaks of the Missionaries in strong terms of approbation and applause. Besides the general salutary tendency of their labours (but within a sphere by necessity so limited), he mentions various instances of their beneficial interference to prevent deeds of violence, and allay the passions of hostile parties.

The book is very handsomely printed, and furnished with a map and a few illustrative plates.

IN

Art. III. On the Philosophy of the Mind. By JAMES DOUGLAS, Esq., of Cavers. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1839. 8vo. pp. 387. N the eager pursuit of physical science, (to say nothing of the keenness and intensity of feeling with which men now a-days throng the scenes of business, and engage in the conflicts of politics,) the philosophy of the mind has been recently almost forgotten. Nothing, not even poetry, has been such a drug in the literary market, or has stood so little chance of obtaining a fair hearing, as metaphysics.

We are persuaded that this depreciation, or rather neglect,the result partly of the spirit of the times, partly of the impatience with which the generality of men throw from them whatever requires hard thinking-is of ill omen to the interests of a thorough education. We are not, we hope, disposed to overrate the advantages promised by the study of this science, or to exalt it at the expense of others,-the great error into which the advocates of any particular branch of study are so apt to fall. We have learnt at least this great lesson from the study of mental philosophy, and from a survey of man's intellectual powers, not to depreciate any

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one of the few totally different methods of instruction which, being addressed to different parts of the mental constitution, secure for each its appropriate discipline, and for the whole a more harmonious and perfect development. Such results as these constitute the chief benefits of education, in comparison with which the mere amount of knowledge-the number of facts imparted in the course of it, are of but secondary importance. The principal methods by which this discipline may be most effectually secured, appear to us, the study of languages, of mathematics, and mental philosophy, including, of course, in the last, the principles which lie at the basis of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. While each of these three great methods of intellectual discipline make demands upon all the powers of the mind, each has its principal strain rather upon some than others. It is true that both mathematics and mental science, principally tend to strengthen the powers of abstraction and generalization; but each, also, involves processes of mind in degree at least peculiar to itself.

While mathematics principally teach the knack of ready logical inference, the data being comparatively few, narrow, and certain, mental philosophy cherishes the habit of cautious induction. This is required by the complexity and subtlety of the phenomena with which it has to deal; and it is a habit of immense importance in every branch of moral science.-And though both studies tend principally to exercise the powers of abstraction, it is in very different ways.

Mental philosophy, by the very nature of the investigations which it involves, by the fleeting, subtle, and evanescent character of the thoughts and emotions subjected to its analysis, by the infrequency and reluctance with which men attempt the painful work of introspection, and not least by the absence of all symbols to illustrate the processes of intellect, makes a still stronger demand on abstraction than even the mathematics. In the same manner, the attempt to analyze and to classify phenomena so complex and so transient, affords the highest exercise to the powers of generalization, while the attempt to express these processes and results in language, necessitates habitual caution in the definition and employment of terms. Now, all this we say is a great and important kind of discipline, the benefit of which is not lost nor even diminished by the alleged uncertainty of the study. The analysis of the mental phenomena may be, in a particular case, very unsatisfactory, and the requisite exactness of expression perhaps, in all cases, impossible; it is the habits, nurtured by such pursuits, which constitute the great benefit, not the certainty of the knowledge acquired in them. It is the very difficulties of the subject-difficulties, perhaps, never to be wholly surmounted,-which principally render it worthy of attention at all. It is these which have slowly taught the patience, caution, and accuracy which, when transferred to other and more easy subjects of investigation,