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- 6798
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:15.152Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6773
- text
- people of that island had, in many things, “more refined ideas of
decency than ourselves.” Vancouver, also, has some noteworthy ideas on
this subject, respecting the Sandwich Islanders.
That the immorality alluded to is continually increasing is plainly
shown in the numerous, severe, and perpetually violated laws against
licentiousness of all kinds in both groups of islands.
It is hardly to be expected that the missionaries would send home
accounts of this state of things. Hence, Captain Beechy, in alluding to
the “Polynesian Researches” of Ellis, says that the author has
impressed his readers with a far more elevated idea of the moral
condition of the Tahitians, and the degree of civilization to which
they have attained, than they deserve; or, at least, than the facts
which came under his observation authorized. He then goes on to say
that, in his intercourse with the islanders, “they had no fear of him,
and consequently acted from the impulse of their natural feeling; so
that he was the better enabled to obtain a correct knowledge of their
real disposition and habits.”
Prom my own familiar intercourse with the natives, this last reflection
still more forcibly applies to myself.
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