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the right use of words , and of precise definitions . He attributed the prevalent "disorders of opinion" to the insane perversion of formulas carried to excess by demagogic writers . The Bishop Tiad already , with far move purpose and propriety , but with an emphasis which to the uninitiated may have seemed almost irony , adored the " DicrioNAKr" which it is the special province of the Academy to conserve . Count Salvandt anathematised with a melancholy affluence of common-place declamation all revolutions . It Is the last privilege of these rejected statesmen to forget , and this ex-minister forgets that he once conspicuously celebrated the Revolution
of 1830 . It is true that ily a fagot el fagot . The Revolution of 1830 Carried M . de Salvajooy into power and place . A . subsequent crisis consigned him , after a moral quarantine at Jersey , to this refuge of political senilities The Academy of Forty , which used to have " the wit of force , " possesses now the weakness and the wilfulness of two impotent royalties . The Pai « ais Mazabix is a Hospital of Invalides—we should rather say Incurables- Many other points are suggested by this recent sitting of the French Academy . For the present we must be content with this pleasant episcopal surprise and this pitiable political apostacy .
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JNEW ZEALAND . Traditions anil Superstitions of the New Zealanders . By Edward Shortland . Longmans . The earliest superstitions of any branch of the human family present one of the profoundest subjects of investigation to the philosophical inquirer who pursues the first faint footsteps of the world ' s history through the successive developments and migrations of the race , and often in the dim records of some savage tribe seems to penetrate to the rude alphabet of the universal language , and of the immemorial belief . We are therefore surprised to learn that " the missionaries ( in New Zealand ) , who , from their knowledge of the language , alone had it in their power for many years to converse freely -with the native race , seem to have avoided all inquiries on such
subjects . ' \ It was surely a weak and narrow theory of duty to regard these superstitions as mere exercises of ingenuity for the ethnologist , and altogether foreign , if not hostile , to the work of the apostle . Perhaps so mistaken a reticence may account for those imperfect and insincere conversions -with which missionaries have too often teen content to feed the confidence of their Societies . For how is a physician to effect a real cure without having obtained an insight into the constitutional predispositions of the patient ? A cannibal may be converted fromnaan-flesh to mutton , but how shall a genuine Christian be manufactured out of an hereditary believer in Atua and Tapu by a preacher who has never taken the trouble , or had the courage , to sound the recesses of those savage instincts of awe and fear ? The soil must be prepared for the sowing of the new and purer faith—and how ? By striking at the roots of the old .
The writer of this singularly interesting little book , Mr . Shortland , has had peculiar opportunities of studying the manners and traditions of the aborigines of New Zealand , fronv many years' residence in districts to which the missions had scarcely penetrated , and in close and friendly intercourse with the natives , of whom he subsequently became the official protector in the dealings with the Colonial Government , and the Company . The natives almost universally attribute their origin to the crews of three canoes , who , according to their tradition , migrated some five hundred years ago from an island named Hawaiki , which they point out to be in a northeast direction from New Zealand . The genealogies of several chiefs attested and compared , and the scantiness of the population in the islands when first discovered ^ by Cook , ^ ' and more particularly so of the middle and southern islands , -which , according to the accounts given by the New Zealanders , were
colonised from the north island , " seem to support this tradition . This island of Hawaiki Mr . Shortland conjectures to be " the principal one of the Sandwich Island group , pronounced Hawaii by its present native inhabitants , the Owaihee of Cook . " There is no reason to believe that the canoes could not have accomplished the voyage . The language of the New Zealanders is found to be nearly identical with that of Hawaii . " Both were found , on their first discovery by Cook , to resemble each other in personal appearance , in warlike disposition , and in the practice of cannibalism . " Similar ceremonies and customs , and similar habits of subsistence , seem to establish the " connexion between the inhabitants of these islands , bo remote from , each other . " The natives of New Zealand are a mixed race , " containing among them two elements , one of which may be called the pure Indian , the other being the Papuan . " Their " prevailing typo of feature is the Indian . "
• 1 hese traces of a mixed race nro easily accounted for by supposing , as indeed appears certain , that the Indian Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula were primitively inhabited by Papuans , and that the brown or copper-coloured race , whom wo have called Indian , invaded their country and took possession of parts of it ; for a long time must have elapsed between their ilrst invasion of the Malay Peninsula and their conquest of the Philippine Islands , from which point we suppose the ancestors of tho I ' olynesiana to have migrated . And during tho interval , in which the two raoen remained so nearly iu contact , while tho ono -was being supplanted or absorbed by tho other , no doubt alliances must have taken pince between individuals of opposite sexes , giving rise to the appearances of a mixed race now obaorvod . "
" The New / colanders had no idea of a Supremo Being creating and overruling all things . " They invested the heavens and earth with individual existences , and their cosmogony was a generation rather than a creation . Tho Adam of tho Now Zcalandors was known as Tiki-ahuu , jind their idea of aristocracy was democratic enough , for to bo designated as the son of Ti-Id was tho highest evidence of good birth . Tho Atita , or supernatural beings , tire believed to luivc existed before man , but to bo indifferent to human afiiiirs : tho Atua who wutcW over n tribe are tho spirits of its departed warriors . Tho to / iuttfla , a family priest , is tho intercessor with tho Atua . Tho abode of spirits is a region situated beneath tho earth , culled To Heigna . Some tnbos preserve omull carved images of wood , each oi which ia dedicated to tho spirit of an ancestor , who is believed to enter into its aubutanco to hold convorao with the living . These imagea iu-o not
worshipped , nor held sacred as possessing in themselves virtue , but merely as having been in contact with an Alua . Mr . Shortland had an interview with certain Atua , which , like the spirit-rappings , was half failure , half success . We regret our space will not allow us to extract the account of this anrusinoseance . There is nothing in these small images , and in the belief that spirits enter into their substance , that may not be paralleled nearer home in less savage nations , and the reservation that the images are not worshipped , but only held sacred , is not unfamiliar to our experience . The following passage is highly characteristic : — ° " Some persons have imagined that they could trace in tlie traditions of the Tvew Zealanders vestiges of the principal historical facts connected with the early state of
mankind , recorded by Moses . But , I must confess , that my inquiries on these subjects have led me to arrive at very different conclusions . A . gentleman connected with the Church Mission , with Avhom I was once conversing- on the subject , assured me that tlie natives among whom he resided had a distinct tradition of the Deluge . As this gentleman , had been twelve or fourteen years in the country , and possessed an intimate knowledge of the Maori language , his statement would have been generally accepted as most worthy of reliance . On further inquiry , however , from the same tribe of natives who were his informants , I was soon convinced that he had been misled by his own preconceived ideas , and that the Deluge of his imagination was no more than a remarkable flood , which had overwhelmed a village several generations ago . The particulars of this event I obtained from a chief named Te Awhe . "
Tapu ^ tabou , from which we get our word taboo , means , literally , " marked thoroughly , " , in a secondary sense , " sacred or prohibited : — " The fundamental law on which all their siiperstitious restrictions depend is , that if anything tapu is permitted to come in contact with food , or with any vessel or place where food is ordinarily kept , such food must not afterwards be eat by any one , and such vessel or place must no longer be devoted to its ordinary use ; fhe food , vessel , or jilace becoming tapu from , the instant of its contact with an object already tapu . " Everything not tapu is noa , or free and common , and the tapu may be removed by certain ceremonies , but "for ^ vvtiicireVerything would have become tapu in time , and so life itseLfwould have come to a full stop ! This belief in tapu has become much relaxed since the introduction of Christianity , but it has not entirely disappeared , nor have the Alua been altogether superseded by the new faith ; ¦ The only cause of disease is supposed to be the possession of the body by infant spirits , the agents of the vengeance of the Atua .
It is not so very long ago that "witchcraft was flourishing in England : in New Zealand this profession is-known , by the name of makittu , which is , in fact , the mystery of bringing down the anger of the Atua on your enemy . It is remarkable that when the first missionaries preached in N " ew Zealand the "Atuaalways declared Jesus Christ to be the true God : " " and this may account , " continues Mr . Shortland , " for the little opposition which the introduction of Christianity received in New Zealand . " Sometimes part of a tribe or family became converts , while the Test remained in their old belief . " And it sometimes became a matter of arrangement among the elders who should be missionary and ^ vho should remain devil . " The jealousies of tribes , says Mr . Shortland , have often determined the selection of a form of Christianity , as the following example proves : —
" Had it not been for the existence of such jealousies , the whole native population of Cook ' s Straits would , in all likelihood , have become members of the Church of England ; for the first European Missionary who resided in that part of New Zealand , the Rev . O . Iladfield , was a most zealous and intelligent minister of the Gospel . But it so liappened that the young chiefs of the tribe called Ngatitoa would not receive instruction from him , because a son and nephew of Te Rauparaha , of whom , they were jealous , had the credit generally with their people of having brought Mr . Hadfleld from tlie Bay of Islands to dwell with them . They , therefore , determined , to have a Missionary of their own finding , and went to the head-quarters of the " Wesleyan establishment , and prevailed on that body to send one of their number to reside with them . Thus the inhabitants of Cook ' s Straits became divided between the Church of
England and the Wesleyaai sect . " W ~ c cannot , in our limited space , do justice to the various and ample information contained in this little volume on the social condition and customs of the New Zealanders . The chapters on . the ceremonies attending births and burials , on the education and amusements of youth ; on their war and love songs , are full of interest . The life of the aborigines when first discovered is vividly described : their agriculture , their mechanical skill , their mode of barter , their calendar : their social distinctions , forms of justice , laws and precedents : their arms and fortifications , and modes of warfare : their tenure of land , and form of bequests and titles—all theso important topics are handled with perfect mastery of the subject , smd illustrated by special cases . The last chapter , on the classification of lands according to the titles of claimants , and on the disputes arising out of the purchase of land from natives with doubtful titles , deserves to bo read by all colonists , and by all who pay attention to colonial affairs ; it bears tho murk of the writer ' s active experience . In an appendix will be found valuable illustrative notes , and a vocabulary of native words .
JNuw Zealand and the name of Sbi / wyn are imporinhably associated in the annals of that new world which is to redress the balance of tho old . Tho labours and sufferings of this heroic man and true type of a Christian apostle have not only taught humanity to cannibals and civilisation to savagos ; they liavo made tho religion of the Cuoss a promise and a pledge of justice tun ! beneficence , a standard of rig ht and liberty , a luminary of pence and order , -wherever his footsteps have left a trace and his voice an cc 3 io . Bishop Se i . wyn has proaohed and worked , it may bo said , as tho representative of a local system and of a locnl form of worship ^ which , ovon within tho sphere of tho Christian world , occupies tho position and oxorts tho influence rather of a powerful seel ; than of a catholic unity .
But all the power and patronage of aristocratic England at his back could not have done his work as ho baa donu it if the spirit of tho worker had been less honest , fearless , and upright . Bishop Sklwvn has dona for tho English Church what Canning promised to do for free institutions . He has " redressed tho balance" of a Church weakened by wealth , corrupted by compromise , tottering under privileges , and torpid with roposo at homo , by tho creation , of a church in those fur iahuub ol tho South Pacific , which in labours aud perils and watehings , in suffering and self-denial , half rocals tho purity » ud tho strength of that earlier and austeror age when tlie faith was purchased by the poverty of outcasts , and Bealcd by the blood of martyrs;—when tlte only crown to which bo-
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™ 96 THE LEADER . [ Saturda y ,
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 18, 1854, page 1096, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2065/page/16/
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