The story of the Lifu mission - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ...met, that, from principle, we had no desire to have any official connection with the Government, and that the sacredness of a minister's promise could not be very much augmented by an oath, for he who was base enough to break the former would not scruple to violate the latter. The commandant referred the matter to the governor, who considered my letter sufficient. With my reply to the governor's letter I sent two other communications--one asking permission to put in circulation four small works in the Lifu language which had been printed at Mare, and two of which the excommandant of the Loyalty islands had forbidden to be circulated, copies of which I forwarded to his Excellency; the other asking to be allowed to reopen the native seminary for the training of native pastors and pioneer teachers, also the day-schools at the different stations where teachers are located, by whom they would be conducted as before, under my superintendence. We in our simplicity supposed, that having received the instructions of the Imperial Government relative to the Protestant mission in the Loyalty group, the governor would be disposed' to allow us to resume our former labours; in this, however, we were grievously disappointed. We soon perceived that " liberty of worship, " like all other kinds of liberty, admits of a variety of meanings, according to the dispositions of the mind. To those who presented the memorial to the Emperor, and to whom his Majesty addressed his reply, "liberty of worship " meant one thing; to M. Guillain, the reputed severe captain of a man-of-war, to whom the Government of New Caledonia was for a time committed, it meant quite another. His Excellency, in answer to my communications, intimated to me,...