These houses, like those of separate families, have no walls.  Privacy, indeed, is little wanted among people who have not the idea of indecency, and who gratify every appetite and passion before witnesses, with no more sense of impropriety than we feel when we satisfy our hunger at a social board with our family or friends.  Those who have no idea of indecency with respect to actions, can have none with respect to words; it is, therefore, scarcely necessary to observe, that, in the conversation of these people, that which is the principal source of their pleasure, is always the principal topic; and that every thing is mentioned without any restraint or emotion, and in the most direct terms, by both sexes.[8]

[Footnote 8:  Let us for once hear the missionary account, in palliation at least, of such clamant enormities.  “They have no partitions in their houses; but it may be affirmed, they have in many instances more refined ideas of decency than ourselves; and one long a resident, scruples not to declare, that he never saw any appetite, hunger and thirst excepted, gratified in public.  It is too true, that for the sake of gaining our extraordinary curiosities, and to please our brutes, they have appeared immodest in the extreme.  Yet they lay the charge wholly at our door, and say, that Englishmen are ashamed of nothing, and that we have led them to public acts of indecency never before practised among themselves.  Iron here, more precious than gold, bears down every barrier of restraint.  Honesty and modesty yield to the force of temptation.”  A remark may be made here of some consequence.  In estimating the momentum of temptations, we ought to consider not only their direct strength, but also what is known or believed of the extent of their influence on the society to which people belong.  A man, it is certain, will much more readily acquiesce in those which he has reason to think common to his fellow creatures, than in others exclusively directed to himself.  In the one case he anticipates sympathy, should he transgress; in the other, he is deterred by the apprehension of being singular in guilt.  The Otaheitans were in the former predicament, and accordingly were perhaps universally accessible to the charms of nails and hatchets and beads.  Whereas, it is probable, that had even similar solicitations been attempted in any instances unknown to each other, they would perhaps have been resisted.  But vice once known to be established in society, becomes daily more prolific of its kind, and, like the Fama of Virgil, vires acquirit eundo.  It is but fair to give these islanders the full benefit of this principle, when we sit in assize on them.  Pray who can tell what would be the consequence of a visit from some of the inhabitants of Saturn, or the Georgium Sidus, should they open up their ultramundane treasures in sight of the British court?  Is it conceivable, that the lovers of embroidery, and lace and diamonds would resist the witcheries of the strangers?—­or that the marvellous effects of their liberality in distribution, should be confined within the walls of St James’s?  He that can wisely answer these questions, is at liberty to return a verdict in the trial of the Otaheitans.—­E.]