people of the produce of their soil and industry.
This was the cause which led to the success of the
Mahomedans, and it was naturally the very opposite
course which led to the defeat of the Christians.
The Europeans in the Indian Archipelago have been
just what the Turks have been in Europe, and the
consequences of the policy pursued by both may
fairly be quoted as parallel cases.
- The only people among the Indian islanders who
adopted the Christian religion were those nations and
tribes who had but partially adopted Mahomedan-
ism, or were still Pagans, and who, among the nations
their neighbours, had made but a secondary progress
in civilization. None of the greater and more improved
tribes ever became proselytes, because they
had adopted more heartily the Mahomedan doctrines,
and were, besides, too powerful to be wholly subdued.
The poverty and barbarism of the natives of
the Ai’chipelago, under their own forms of government;
and the deprivation of political, and
even of personal rights under those of Europeans,
forbid us to believe that a rational Christianity
either was, or ever can be, under such circumstances,
the character of religion among them.
Their religion, under such disadvantages, whatever
its name, can reasonably be viewed as but little
better than one form of superstition distinguished
from another. No middle or higher class, we
may be assured, can be formed to set an example.
or form the morals of the humbler classes, in a
country, the natives of which are, by a fixed policy,
deprived of the property of the soil they were
born to inherit, and where commerce is shackled
by the effects of restrictions and monopolies, the
direct tendency of which, as long as they last, must
be to perpetuate poverty, ignorance, and superstition.
Under all the disadvantages of intolerance, bigotry,
and oppression in the Philippines, and o'f
a state of slavery in the Moluccas, amounting to a
privation of almost every genial right which belongs
to the natural situation of these people, some
advantage may still be discovered in the influence
of the Christian religion. It has either given rise
to an energy and intelligence superior to that which
characterizes the followers of the other modes of
worship, or has bred manners more mild, and
morals more inoffensive. *
The natives of the Philippines, who are Christians,
possess a share of energy and intelligence,
not only superior to their Pagan and Mahomedan
brethren of the same. islands, but superior also to
* Independent of the direct influence of religious principles,
110 doubt a good deal of this may fairly be ascribed to the reciprocity
of kindness, good offices, and confidence, which a
similarity of religious belief induces between the governors and
the governed.