A WORLDLET WITHIN THE WORLD.
WE wonder that Admiral de Horsey's report on the condition of Pitcairn Island has not attracted more public attention. The story of the island is curious enough, and its present con- dition more curious even than its story. As our readers probably know, it is an island of about seven miles in circumference, and about a square mile and a quarter in extent, not much more than half the size of Sark. It is only two miles and a quarter long, and not half that in average breadth, so that a minuter spot, which is habitable at all, scarcely exists on the globe, and none certainly which is so far removed from its nearest inhabited neighbours. Otaheite is several hundred miles away, and but that it is the only place where ships sailing from the South-American coast to Otaheite can get fresh water, a ship would hardly touch there from any motive of self-interest once in a hundred years. It was first occu- pied by nine of the mutineers of the Bounty,' who, in 1790, fled from Otaheite, in the not groundless fear of being there apprehended and punished by the British Government for their mutiny, taking with them six Otaheitan men and twelve Otaheitan women. Thus the original settlement was one the chief characteristic of which was the violent and lawless character of the chief leaders. But before 1800, eight out of the nine mutineers, all the Otaheitan men, and several of the women had been killed out by violence or disease, and the island was populated only by the children of the original settlers, with a few of the Otaheitan women, and a single English sailor, originally called Alexander Smith, who had taken the name of John Adams, and who ruled over the little settlement. Solitude had produced a very deep effect on his character, and he had established a simple code of laws for the rising generation, which had been so well obeyed that the reports of the settlement, as early as 1814, were like reports of the Happy Valley. In 1831 their numbers had increased to eighty- seven— a population nearly as large as the island can support— and hence they were transported, at their own request, from Pitcairn Island to Otaheite. But disgusted by the dissolute habits of the people of that island, most of them returned to Pitcairn Island within the year. In 1856 they again found themselves too numerous for their dwelling-place, and at their own request were taken to Norfolk Island. But in 1859 two families, numbering seventeen in all, returned to their old home, and in 1 864 another instalment returned also. On Admiral de Horsey's visit in the 'Shah,' in September last, he found sixteen men, nineteen women, twenty-five boys, and thirty girls, —say, a number equivalent to some sixteen families in all. Only twelve deaths had occurred in nineteen years, no contagious diseases had visited the island, either as regarded men or cattle. The Governor (elected by universal suffrage of both sexes over seventeen, and open to re-election) is James Russell M'Koy, the steersman of the whale-boat, the only boat they have, and built by himself ; but as, in building it, he had to use iron bolts in the absence of copper, the boat will soon go to pieces. This chief magistrate himself drew up the existing code of laws, using for that purpose John Adams's code, and the amendments on it, with such changes as seemed good to him. But Admiral de Horsey states that they are laws of "puerile simplicity," con- templating as possible only three crimes, theft, profane swearing, and illicit intercourse between the sexes, offences of which no case has ever been known to occur since the laws were drawn up.
Captain Beechey, writing in 1825, said of the Pitcairn Islanders before either of their removals, "These excellent persons appear to live together in perfect harmony and contentment, to be vir- tuous, religious, cheerful, and hospitable, to be patterns of con- jugal and parental affection, and to have very few vices." Admiral de Horsey says :—" I have ventured to quote these words as they hold true to this day, the children having followed in the footsteps of their parents." Indeed, unless the brevity of Admiral de Horsey's report to some extent conceals his meaning, he would seem to think not that these islanders have "very few vices," but • that they have none at all. Of their religious attributes, he says, "No one can speak without deep respect. A people whose greatest privilege and pleasure is to commune in prayer with their God, and to join in hymns of praise, and who are, moreover, cheerful, diligent, and probably freer from vice than any other community, need no priest amongst them." Nevertheless they have a pastor, Mr. Simon Young,—apparently one of themselves, and of course not in Orders,—who always uses the liturgy of the Church of England, and is helped very efficiently by his daughter, Miss Rosalind Amelia Young. These two teach the children reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and Scripture history. The girls learn sewing and hat-making, and all the children are taught part-singing, and practise it very effectively. Schooling is conducted in the church-house, at one end of which is a free library. The island has no springs, but rain usually falls once a month, so that it is only occasionally that the people suffer from drought. Once a month also, or thereabouts, they have a chance of communi- cating with a passing ship. The only language spoken is English. Drunkenness is unknown, and alcohol is used only in cases of disease. Twice recently they have assisted the crews of wrecked English vessels most liberally, one islander's life having been lost in the dangerous exploit ; and so far from taking advantage of these wrecks for their own purposes, they seem to have re- ceived no equivalent or compensation in either case for the aid rendered.
In short, if the account of Admiral de Horsey is to be trusted, here is a little population of simple, contented, friendly, gentle, religious people, poor and happy, strict in their Sunday services, but eager to do any good work on the Sunday, with- out thinking it Sabbath-breaking ; not loving the world, or the things of the world, but returning by preference to their seclusion, whenever the narrowness of their limits has driven them forth to try their lot in a more miscellaneous com- munity. Indeed, the adults of Pitcairn Island must be regarded as a twice-sifted population. Once the greater number of them returned from Otalleite, repelled by the dissoluteness of that island. And again, apparently about half of their whole number returned from Norfolk Island, for a similar reason. Hence, of the elders at least, those preferring the excitements and temptations of a larger world to the peaceful and homely life of this little nook, have twice been skimmed off the society, and only those whose pre- ference for the moral seclusion of the place is very distinct, have been left behind. It is pretty certain that this process of selec- tion must go on afresh, as every fresh generation grows up. The island will not apparently sustain a population of more than a hundred ; so that as the numbers grow, those who prefer a more exciting world will inevitably leave, and only the greatest lovers of moral tranquillity will remain behind. Thus a process of moral selection may by degrees furnish us with a population of unusually refined moral simplicity,—where the preponderance of unruly propensities is almost unknown ; where the love of excite- ment has well-nigh vanished ; where there is no love of money, because money has no uses (Admiral de Horsey says that there is no coin on the island, except by way of a curiosity) ; and where there is nothing forbidding or austere, even in the religious character of the people ; where, too, the affections never swell into passions, and sentiment is too much restricted in its sphere to admit of its rising into sentimentality and falsehood.
It is curious to speculate to what type of character a com- munity, thus carefully weeded from generation to generation of all its more restless and unstable elements, might eventually give rise. Would it be to a community of saints from whom we might hope to derive the leaven with which our impurer societies might be leavened, or would it be to a community of gentle and innocent children, who would be too much awestruck and repelled by the ordinary foims of human wickedness to render us any efficient moral aid whatever? Of course it is to be assumed that the harmony of these islanders' natures would be strengthened by the continual exclusion of all restless and feverish elements, and that the type of character which would result would not be a weak one, but in its way a very sto/de one,—one in which the moral taste at least would be very clear and strong,—in which indeed there would be no fiery battle against temptation, but rather a fixed and serene preference for the life in which temptation is kept at a distance, and a calm, just, disinterested, and gentle habit of character en- couraged. It must be conceded, then, that the repeated elimina- tion of all passionate, disturbing, and exciting elements in such a community, and the accumulation of pure and kindly and light-hearted tastes amongst the islanders, would, in all proba- bility, produce in the end a marked and a very unique moral type, not manifesting the kind of weakness we generally associate with mere innocence, but the kind of strength which we associate with the highest stability. At the same time, it is, we think, clear that such a type of character would hardly be one likely to render effective help in an old community, full of the old self- willed and vicious elements. The deep distaste for evil is, in one sense, not enough ,—and is, in another sense, too much, —for effective struggle against evil. It is not enough, for it keeps those who feel it out of the atmosphere where they might best be useful. It is too much, for it robs them of active sympathy with the victims of violent desires and of • ruinous passions. Then, again, there is a certain fearfulness and feeling of inadequacy to the struggles of life, bred by this constantly protected state of moral feeling. The most pathetic touch in Admiral de Horsey's report is his state- ment that "a notion appears to prevail among the Pitcairn islanders that her Majesty's Government are displeased with them
for having returned from Norfolk Island although their return was, I believe, at their own expense, and they have since been no burden to the Crown." 'The Admiral did what he could to remove this feeling, but a gentle fear of this kind is obviously characteristic of a small society, purged of all self-willed desires and agitating passions, and liable, therefore, to scrupulous fancies of their own of a kind which would hardly have a meaning at all for men who knew what active life really was. The fear reminds one almost of the fears which very good and gentle Calvinists, who have been bred up to think their own nature in need of absolute and complete renewal, entertain, though in their case it is fear not of the Governments of this world, but of the government of the invisible and eternal kingdom. They are always afraid that some yielding to their own inmost bias, will be reckoned to them as an offence, by a power which requires that they should generally renounce that bias. That the Pitcairn islanders should ascribe such a feeling to the British Government, to whom they seem very loyal, is, we suspect, an indication of that too great tendency to believe itself in the wrong, which is apt to mark a type of character of this too negative, too tame, too little original kind. After all, originality, even moral originality, needs a cer- tain self-confidence to support it. If you make the regulative rule which restrains self-will too large a proportion of life, and ingrain it too much into the very essence of the moral tastes, the result is likely to be this deep fearfulness lest almost any preference which cannot be demonstrated to be right, should be wrong, simply because it is preference. Ethics are everything in a society of strong emotions and strong bents, but you may dwell on the- law, till the imperious impulses which need the law, are thinned away almost to nothing. We should be inclined to suspect, from Admiral de Horsey's brief and interesting account of this little remote world within a world, that the moral selection which tends to make these islanders so good, kindly, and loveable, had almost grown up to the point of impairing the vitality which needs the re- straint of law, and had certainly grown beyond the point where the rein and the curb add to, even while they guide, the force of the nature for which the rein and the curb were devised.
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