It
seemed, too, at one moment as if these Maoris would become generally
Christianised; but the kind of Christianity which they saw
exemplified in certain colonists, hungry for land and little
scrupulous as to the means by which they could gratify that hunger,
largely undid the good effected through the agency of missionaries,
the countrymen of these oppressors, whose evil deeds they were
helpless to hinder. A superstition that was nothing Christian laid
hold of many who had once been altogether persuaded to embrace the
teachings of Jesus, and the relapsed Maoris doubtless were guilty of
savage excesses; yet the original blame lay not chiefly with them;
nor is it possible to regard without deep pity the spectacle
presented at the present day of "the noblest of all the savage races
with whom we have ever been brought in contact, overcome by a worse
enemy than sword and bullet, and corrupted into sloth and
ruin, ...ruined physically, demoralised in character, by drink."
Nobler than other aborigines, who have faded out before the invasion
of the white man, as they may be, their savage nobility has not saved
them from the common fate; they too have "learned our vices faster
than our virtues," aided by the speculative traders in alcoholic
poison, who have followed on the track of the colonist, and who,
devil's missionaries as they are, have counteracted too quickly the
work of the Christian evangelists who preceded them.
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