There are many more reasons that might be urged in favor of the Fijians.  We are not aware that the reverend missionaries have given any statistical tables, showing a regularity in the annual numbers of consumed persons, male and female, classed according to the reasons why consumed; but no one can doubt that such tables might be given, and if so, the whole question of anthropophagism could be very easily buckled up in a tidy little valise.  The Fijians, in the plural, we take it, have little or nothing to do with it; it is the abstract, will-less, impersonal Fijian—­who, according to the learned Ferrari,[A] would be called, now, Podesta Fijian, now Consul Fijian, now Papa Fijianus—­that snuffs the flavor of his own dear natural pot a feu; and Right or Wrong, Just or Unjust, Commendable or Revolting, are schoolboy distinctions, no longer recognized by the philosophical historian, who treats all moral questions and national movements like questions of natural philosophy,—­like social chemistry, in which so puerile a word as poison has no place.  Arsenic is arsenic with certain effects, and nothing more; and society poisons itself annually to such an amount, arithmetically expressed.

[Footnote A:  Histoire des Revolutions d’Italie, ou Guelf’s et Gibelins.  Par J. Ferrari.  Paris, 1858.]

We ask leave to add two suggestions in favor of the Fijians, both, it would seem, of philosophic importance.  If you do not like the Fijian national dish,—­national in more than one sense,—­have the dear sons of Nature, as Carlyle probably would call them, not the right to reply,—­“We do not like your sauerkraut, if you are a German; your polenta, if you are an Italian; your olla podrida, if you are a Spaniard; nor your grit, if you are a Dane; your bacon and greasy greens, if you are a Southerner; nor your baked beans, if you are a Northerner; nor any other stuff called national dishes,—­all of which are vile, except English roast beef and plum-pudding, and Neapolitan maccaroni.”

The other suggestion is this:  Is it likely that Nature has placed the Fijians exactly in the same meridian with Greenwich, which in some measure may be called the meridian of civilization, for nothing?—­is it likely that all the solar and cosmic influences which must result from this fact have really left the Fijian in that state of hyper-brutality which you think is proved by his menage?  Is it, we ask, fairly to be supposed?  We think not.

We do not presume to know whether we have carried conviction to the minds of our readers; but even if we have not,—­if we have only been sufficiently fortunate to give the first impulse to the great inquiry, we shall be satisfied.  If we consider the history of some opinions now openly preached and vehemently maintained,—­how timidly they were first hinted at, within our own recollection, and with what surprising rapidity they have risen to an unblushing