Geographic conditions made infanticide a state measure in these crowded communities.  On the small coral atolls, where the food supply was scantest, it was enforced by law.  On Vaitupu, in the Ellice group, only two children were allowed to a couple; on Nukufelau, only one.  Any violation of this unique sumptuary law was punished by a fine.[1008] On the congested Gilbert atolls, a woman rarely had more than two children, never more than three.  Abortion, produced by a regular midwife, disposed of any subsequent offspring.  Affection for children was very strong here, and infanticide of the living was unknown.[1009] In Samoa, also, Turner found the practice restricted to the period before birth; but in Tahiti and elsewhere it was enforced by the tribal village authorities on the born and unborn.[1010] In pre-Christian Hawaii, two-thirds of all children, and especially girls, were killed by their parents either before or after birth.  The result was a decay of the maternal instinct and the custom of farming out children to strangers.  This contributed to the excess of infant mortality, the degeneration of morals and the instability of the family.[1011] So in Japan the pressure of population led to infanticide and the sale of daughters to a life of ignominy, which took them out of the child-bearing class.[1012] Nor was either custom under the ban.

The result is a deterioration of morals, an invasion of the family bond, and a decay of the finer sentiments therewith connected.  Captain Cook in 1770 found in Tahiti Eareeoie or Arreoys societies, which were free-love associations including in their number “over half of the better sort of the inhabitants.”  The children begotten of these promiscuous unions were smothered at birth.  Obscene conversations, indecent dances and frank unchastity on the part of girls and women were the attendant evils of these loose morals.[1013] Cook was sure that “these societies greatly prevent the increase of the superior classes of people of which they are composed.”  Malthus reports a similar association in the Marianne Islands, distinguished by a similar name, devoted to race suicide.[1014] Everywhere in Oceanica marriage is unstable, and with few exceptions unchastity prevails.  Stevenson thinks it chiefly accountable for the decline of population in the islands.[1015] However, in the detailed taboos laid upon women in Fiji, Marquesas, and other Polynesian islands we have the survival of an early measure to increase reserve between the sexes, long after regard for chastity has vanished.[1016]

[Sidenote:  Low valuation of human life.]