Williams, the martyr of Erromanga, relates an instance where the inhabitants of an island professing Christianity voluntarily assembled, and solemnly revived all their heathen customs.
All the world over, facts are more eloquent than words; the following will show in what estimation the missionaries themselves hold the present state of Christianity and morals among the converted Polynesians.
On the island of Imeeo (attached to the Tahitian mission) is a seminary under the charge of the Rev.Mr.Simpson and wife, for the education of the children of the missionaries, exclusively.

Sent home--in many cases, at a very early age--to finish their education, the pupils here are taught nothing but the rudiments of knowledge; nothing more than may be learned in the native schools.
Notwithstanding this, the two races are kept as far as possible from associating; the avowed reason being to preserve the young whites from moral contamination.

The better to insure this end, every effort is made to prevent them from acquiring the native language.
They went even further at the Sandwich Islands; where, a few years ago, a playground for the children of the missionaries was inclosed with a fence many feet high, the more effectually to exclude the wicked little Hawaiians.
And yet, strange as it may seem, the depravity among the Polynesians, which renders precautions like these necessary, was in a measure unknown before their intercourse with the whites.

The excellent Captain Wilson, who took the first missionaries out to Tahiti, affirms that the 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.