They have no dislike whatever to the passengers, and indeed would make every exertion to save them, consistent with their own safety, but knowing that all cannot be saved, they naturally give the preference to themselves.

The New Zealanders were perhaps afraid also of their children reflecting on them afterwards, had they brought them up in misery and starvation, and must, no doubt, have studied with infinite care and anxiety those passages of the prophet Jeremiah, wherein it is thus written:

"The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the young children ask bread and no man breaketh it unto them. They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger; for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field. Cursed be the day wherein I was born; let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying a man-child is born unto thee, making him very glad. And let that man be as the cities which the Lord overthrew and repented not; and let him hear the cry in the morning, and the shouting at noon-tide. Because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me. Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame."

In every country where the population increases faster than the means of subsistence, and this is the case in almost every country of the world, excepting the United States of America, and the pampas of Buenos Ayres, there are just four ways of remedying

this evil, first, either by emigrating to some other country where a greater supply of food can he obtained, or, secondly, abstaining from breeding more children than are wanted; or, thirdly, destroying the supernumeraries at the time of their birth; or, lastly, suffering the overplus to die gradually by starvation. By the first process, that is emigration, the surplus population of this country is, to a certain extent, released, though not nearly to the extent required. In regard to the second, most people seem averse to follow the advice of that benevolent and enlightened philosopher the late Dr. Malthus, whose celebrated work on the principles of population goes to show the extreme importance of the principle of moral restraint, and the fatal consequences arising from bringing children into the world without a rational prospect of being able to provide for their subsistence and education, a doctrine which all admit to be remarkably sound in theory, though they complain bitterly of the difficulty of putting it in practice. Neither will the human race follow the example of that enlightened class the farmers, who breed no more cattle on their farms than they are capable of feeding well, as no farmer desires to have a numerous stock deteriorated in value by starvation. In regard to the third remedy, namely, infanticide, the New Zealanders, the Chinese, and some other nations, having no funds for emigration, and no place to which they could go without being even worse off than at home, and not having sufficiently studied Malthus and the other philosophers, who have endeavoured, with such praiseworthy zeal, though ineffectually, to introduce the principle of moral restraint to bear upon mankind; and above all, having been restrained by no law either human or

divine, seem to have resorted to this as affording them a very simple and remarkably speedy deliverance from the evils of surplus population, infinitely preferable, they must no doubt think, to the fourth and last expedient, namely, bringing up their offspring in misery while young, to be starved perhaps altogether at the last. Now it is well known that among the Irish thousands die annually from starvation, and among the Hindoos tens of thousands, and many thousands are now unfortunately carried off every year, both in England and Scotland, from the same cause, particularly in the larger towns; and by the word starvation, I include all those diseases brought on, not only from deficiency of food, but deficiency of clothing, of fuel to warm them, and similar privations which generally accompany the want of food, bringing on fever and other diseases, and eventually death itself. In fact, emigration and starvation combined, contrive to dispose pretty comfortably of all the surplus population of these three kingdoms. Walton says, in reference to this important subject, "It has been observed that there is little chance of living comfortably in this country, unless by some sweeping mortality one-half of its inhabitants should be sent to their graves. The inhabitants of this country are too numerous for its means of subsistence. The feast is not large enough for those who require to partake of it. Some, indeed, occupy such good seats at the table as give them the command of the choicest dishes ; but these are few, compared with the number who are very scantily provided for. So great indeed is the crowd pressing for admission to the table, that some cannot obtain seats at all, and hence the accounts with which we are every now and then horrified, of

persons dying from absolute want of the indispensible necessaries of life."

But thongh the New Zealanders were in the habit of destroying their infants occasionally, when they became too numerous, from a dread of not being able to support them comfortably without starving themselves; yet in some of the islands to the north of it, particularly in the Tahitian and Society islands, the extent to which infanticide was carried on, previous to the missionaries going amongst them about the year 1830, was almost inconceivable, and that too from causes altogether apart from that motive. Mr. Williams, the missionary, mentions that he never met with a single female who had had children prior to the introduction of Christianity, who had not destroyed more or less-some five, some ten, and so on. The wife of one chief, in particular, who sent for him, in great agony, when she was dying, confessed that she had killed no less than sixteen of her children. She was almost frantic, crying out-"Oh, my children, my murdered children," a striking proof of their natural affection.

At the examination of one of his schools in the islands of Raiatea, where 600 children attended, they had a number of flags prepared, with such mottoes as these written on them,-"Had it not been for the Gospel we should have been destroyed as soon as we were born." The parents also attended the examination, and their eyes were gleaming with delight, as the father said to the mother, or the mother to the father, "What a mercy it is that we spared our dear girl." Others lamented in bitterness that they had not spared theirs, and the silent tear, as it stole down the cheeks of many, told the painful tale that all their children

had been destroyed. In the midst of their proceedings a venerable chieftain, grey with age, an arioi of the highest rank, the laws of whose class required the destruction of all his children, arose, and with impassioned look and manner exclaimed, "Oh, that I had known that these blessings were in store for us, then I should have saved my children, and they would have been amongst this happy group, repeating these precious truths; but alas! I destroyed them all,-I have not one left." Turning to the chairman, who was also a relative, he stretched out his arm and exclaimed, "You, my brother, saw me kill child after child, but you never seized this murderous hand, and said, stay, brother, God is about to bless us,-the gospel of salvation is coming to our shores." Then he cursed the gods which they formerly worshipped, saying, "It was you who infused this savage disposition into us, and now I shall die childless, although I have been the father of nineteen children." He then sat down, and in a flood of tears gave vent to his feelings.

Mr. Williams also inentions that he had a female servant for fifteen years, who had been in the habit of practising infanticide as a trade; just as a female in this country would practise midwifery; and went about the country killing children, just as a man in this country would go about killing rats. Both he and Mrs. Williams often listened with feelings of agony to the details of the various modes in which it was done. Sometimes they put a wet cloth on their mouths -sometimes they pinched their throats till they expired, and occasionally they buried them alive. But perhaps the most brutal method of all was breaking the first and second joints of their fingers and toes the moment they were born. If they survived this,