The Daily Telegraph THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3098, 2 June 1881, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1881.

The Christian savages of the South Seas have well learned the lessons taught by the early fathers of the church. The news from the Line Islands, via Auckland, tells a story that may well bring a blush to the face of every professing Christian. A thousand men, women, and children have been massacred because they would not contribute to the greed of a savage who, under the cloak of religion, demanded from the simple inhabitants the means to support a mission station. In too many instances these so-called missions for the propagatiofi of the gospel have been the worst curses that ever fell upon a people. Here is another instance :—ln the beginning of May, 1879, a pamphlet appeared from the pen of Mr Andrew Chirnside, F.R.G.S., who had just returned from a tour in the south-east of Africa, in which charges of usurpation of civil authority, and the infliction of barbarous cruelties

apon natives under the name of punishment, were made against the missionaries of the Established Church of Scotland at Blantyre, near Lake Nyassa. The charges advanced by Mr Chirnside were at once declared to be gross exaggerations. The General Assembly's Committee deemed it expedient, nevertheless, to send out a commission of iuquiry; and from the report of that commission, laid before the Commission of Assembly with relative statements, it is very evident that if the writer of the pamphlet was chargeable with colouring his narrative in any measure, he had ooly too good grounds for his general charges in so far as the facts were concerned. His allegations, generally, were that one native, after a form of trial, had been executed, by shooting, in a revolting fashion ; that another had been fltpged to death ; and that flogging with a formidable whip was of every-day occurrence ; upwards of a hundred lashes having in one day been given to three lads, while on several occasions salt was rubbed into the bleeding backs of the persons flogged. It is admitted by the Assembly's Committee that Mr Chirnside's phamphlet was " unhappily more nearly a statement of facts tban they had hoped to find it when they began to look into the matter last year" ; that "as regarded the execution of the man who was the murderer, or supposed murderer, and the floggings inflicted, the committee regretted to say that he was, in their opinioa, substantially correct." That being so, it matters little, indeed, that the author of the pamphlet should be charged with writing in a sensational tone or with an aniniaß against the mission. The facts admitted—viz., that one native, accused of murder, was practically lynched ; another done to death by flogging ; and severe floggings administered to other seven or eight, whose offences, in the majority of instances, were nothing worse than theft, make the story about as bad as it can well be. And the circumstance that the Committee and Commission of Assembly have felt bound to recall the Rev. Duff Macdouald, the head of the Blantyre Mission, and other two subordinate agents, while they strongly cecsure the conduct of a third, Dr Macklin, not now in their employment, is the best possible evidence that no good defence could be offered. A survey of the whole facts suggests the idea of almost incredible looseness, not only as concerns the practical working of the mbeion, but also in relation to its organisation and the principles on which it was understood to be established. The assumption by missionaries at their own hands of the power of the civil government is certainly surprising enough. Mr Chirnside tells U9 that in mentioning the matter to Dr. Kirk, the British Consul at Zanzibar, he would scarcely credit it, and at once declared that, whether the man accused of murder was guilty or not guilty, the missionaries had no right to put him to death. The only excuse for the head of the Established Church Mission at Blanfyre is that he was comparatively young aad inexperienced, and was left without proper instructions.