{"id":"01KG8AM2SGSQFB7KBPA0W2YZKP","cid":"bafkreiajnd5ok3qwpqwkxv3h4vjvf2w4ww5wgh2267zoipjvp65s4afope","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5725,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:25.203Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1JYRSHWXR7JM0HYS9D4","start_line":5660,"text":"phrases--but will he be the happier? Let the once smiling and populous\r\nHawaiian islands, with their now diseased, starving, and dying natives,\r\nanswer the question. The missionaries may seek to disguise the matter\r\nas they will, but the facts are incontrovertible; and the devoutest\r\nChristian who visits that group with an unbiased mind, must go away\r\nmournfully asking--‘Are these, alas! the fruits of twenty-five years of\r\nenlightening?’\r\n\r\nIn a primitive state of society, the enjoyments of life, though few\r\nand simple, are spread over a great extent, and are unalloyed; but\r\nCivilization, for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in\r\nreserve;--the heart-burnings, the jealousies, the social rivalries,\r\nthe family dissentions, and the thousand self-inflicted discomforts of\r\nrefined life, which make up in units the swelling aggregate of human\r\nmisery, are unknown among these unsophisticated people.\r\n\r\nBut it will be urged that these shocking unprincipled wretches are\r\ncannibals. Very true; and a rather bad trait in their character it must\r\nbe allowed. But they are such only when they seek to gratify the passion\r\nof revenge upon their enemies; and I ask whether the mere eating of\r\nhuman flesh so very far exceeds in barbarity that custom which only\r\na few years since was practised in enlightened England:--a convicted\r\ntraitor, perhaps a man found guilty of honesty, patriotism, and suchlike\r\nheinous crimes, had his head lopped off with a huge axe, his bowels\r\ndragged out and thrown into a fire; while his body, carved into four\r\nquarters, was with his head exposed upon pikes, and permitted to rot and\r\nfester among the public haunts of men!\r\n\r\nThe fiend-like skill we display in the invention of all manner of\r\ndeath-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our\r\nwars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are\r\nenough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most\r\nferocious animal on the face of the earth.\r\n\r\nHis remorseless cruelty is seen in many of the institutions of our own\r\nfavoured land. There is one in particular lately adopted in one of the\r\nStates of the Union, which purports to have been dictated by the most\r\nmerciful considerations. To destroy our malefactors piece-meal, drying\r\nup in their veins, drop by drop, the blood we are too chicken-hearted\r\nto shed by a single blow which would at once put a period to their\r\nsufferings, is deemed to be infinitely preferable to the old-fashioned\r\npunishment of gibbeting--much less annoying to the victim, and more in\r\naccordance with the refined spirit of the age; and yet how feeble is all\r\nlanguage to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we\r\nmason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude\r\nin the very heart of our population.\r\n\r\nBut it is needless to multiply the examples of civilized barbarity; they\r\nfar exceed in the amount of misery they cause the crimes which we regard\r\nwith such abhorrence in our less enlightened fellow-creatures.\r\n\r\nThe term ‘Savage’ is, I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed, when I\r\nconsider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every kind that spring\r\nup in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilization, I am inclined\r\nto think that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is\r\nconcerned, four or five Marquesan Islanders sent to the United States\r\nas Missionaries might be quite as useful as an equal number of Americans\r\ndespatched to the Islands in a similar capacity.\r\n\r\nI once heard it given as an instance of the frightful depravity of a\r\ncertain tribe in the Pacific that they had no word in their language\r\nto express the idea of virtue. The assertion was unfounded; but were\r\nit otherwise, it might be met by stating that their language is almost\r\nentirely destitute of terms to express the delightful ideas conveyed by\r\nour endless catalogue of civilized crimes.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJR1YVNRFP81YQ12CYVKC","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JYRSHWXR7JM0HYS9D4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM2S4JE84Y8BX6NW14EQJ","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AM2SGHSRB83BD3597JD7Q","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:25.392Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:38.103Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}