Note 2 — Chapter XX · COMMERCE.
Reading edition
“With a few legislative reforms,” he concludes, “with improved instruction of the clergy, the islands would become a paradise of inexhaustible riches, and of a well-being approachable in no other portion of the globe. The docility and intelligence of the natives, their imitative virtues (wanting though they be in forethought), make them incomparably superior to any Asiatic or African race subjected to European authority. Where deep thought and calculation are required, they will fail; but their natural dispositions and tendencies, and the present state of civilization among them, give every hope and encouragement for the future.”2