Note 3 — Chapter III · TRANSACTIONS AT OTAHEITE, AND THE SOCIETY ISLANDS; AND PROSECUTION OF THE VOYAGE TO THE COAST OF NORTH AMERICA. (continued 4)

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Of this there can be no doubt, if the assertions of those who have tried it be entitled to credit. When the reluctance, then, to use it is once overcome, there is no reason to think it would ever be abandoned, if it could be safely and conveniently procured. We have instances of this on record. Some persons necessitated, let us allow, to have recourse to it, have continued the practice, where the doing so required the repeated commission of murder. We formerly alluded to instances of this kind, and we see in the case of the people before us, that hunger is not the only motive for so abominable a repast. Admitting even that it were the original one, we should expect the practice to be relinquished whenever other food was to be had in sufficient quantity. But this we know by many proofs is not the case; and perhaps, indeed, it will be found, that this odium is fully as prevalent in savage countries, where nature has been bountiful, as in those where a more stinted hand has inflicted poverty on the inhabitants. The causes, then, and the remedies of this most shocking enormity, are to be looked for in other circumstances than the scarcity or the profusion of food. Here we may be allowed to join in opinion with Dr Robertson. "Human flesh was never used as common food in any country, and the various relations concerning people who reckoned it among the stated means of subsistence, flow from the credulity and mistakes of travellers. The rancour of revenge first prompted men to this barbarous action." In addition to his opinion and that of the authors quoted by him, in his History of America, lib. 4, the reader may advantageously consult Dr Forster's Observations. If the sentiments maintained by these writers be correct, we may expect to find cannibalism in almost every country where the spirit of revenge is not curbed by principle, or directed by the authority of a well-organized government. Here the evidence of these voyages and of others which we could mention, must be allowed considerable importance. There is the strongest reason, indeed, to believe that the inhabitants of all the South Sea islands are now chargeable with this inhumanity, or are but recently recovered from its dominion. We might easily enlarge on this subject, but what has been said, it is probable, is sufficient to direct the attention of the reader, which is all we could find, room to do in the narrow compass of a note. But it is probable, that to most persons, the observations of a late navigator, Captain Krusenstern, will be admitted as decisive of the question of fact, without further enquiry. They may have another effect too, viz. to destroy that delusion which many persons labour under as to the innocence and amiableness of mankind in a state of nature. "Notwithstanding," says he, "the favourable account in Captain Cook's voyages of the Friendly, the Society, and the Sandwich islands, and the enthusiasm with which Forster undertakes their defence against all those who should make use of any harsh expression with regard to them, I cannot refrain from declaring the inhabitants of all the islands of this ocean to be savages, but as ranking generally, perhaps with a very trifling exception, with those men who are still one degree below the brute creation. In a word, they are all cannibals: We need only recollect the islanders who have already been proved to belong to this class;—for instance, the New Zealanders, the cruel inhabitants of Fidji, the Navigateur, the Mendoza, Washington, the Tolomon, and Sandwich islands, the islands of Louisiade and New Caledonia. The good name which the inhabitants of the Friendly islands had acquired has suffered very much by the affair of Captain Bligh, and the visit of D'Entrecasteaux, and it may now be maintained, with some degree of certainty, that they have in this respect the same taste as their neighbours in the Fidji islands, and the Isles des Navigateurs." He has more to the same effect, and is particular in shewing how even the Society islanders, whom he admits to be the most humane and civilized of all the natives of this region, are notwithstanding deformed with horrid crimes, from which the passage to cannibalism is very easy, supposing even that certain suspicious circumstances do not warrant the opinion that they are but recently emerged from it. And as to the people of New Caledonia, again, of whom Cook spoke so highly, he alludes to the more recent information of D'Entrecasteaux, as giving indisputable proof of their being addicted to the same abominable enormity.—E.