* * * * *

The next enterprise of France was hardly so creditable to her as the Algerine conquest.  Midway in the Pacific is the island of Tahita or Otaheite,—­as fair a gem as the sun ever looked down upon.  The soft and balmy air,—­the undulating surface, rising to mountains and sinking into deep valleys, luxuriant with tropical verdure,—­the distant girdle of coral reefs, which holds the island set in a circlet of tranquil blue waters,—­the gentle and indolent temper of the natives,—­have all conspired to throw an air of romance around the very name Otaheite.  The Christian world is bound to it by another tie.  For thither came Protestant missionaries, drawn by the reports of the tractable disposition of the islanders, and labored with such success that in 1817 the king and all his subjects espoused Christianity.

Into this island Eden discord came in the guise of a Roman catechist, who was sent thither for the express purpose of proselyting.  As if aware of the nature of his ungracious task, he disguised his real character.  But he was detected, and, together with a companion who had joined him, was dismissed from the island by Queen Pomare, who dreaded the sectarian strife his presence would awaken.  This was her whole offence.  Four years later, in 1838, when the whole transaction might well have been forgotten, Captain De Petit Thouars appeared in the French frigate Venus, and demanded and obtained satisfaction in the sum of two thousand piastres Spanish, and freedom for Catholic worship.  In two subsequent visits, though no new offence had been given, he increased the severity of his demands, first putting the island under a protectorate, and finally, in 1843, taking full possession of it as a French colony.  The helpless Queen appealed to Louis Philippe, who returned the island, but reaffirmed the protectorate.

This same French protectorate is a rare piece of ponderous irony.  The French governor collects all export and import duties, writes all state-papers, assembles and dismisses the island legislature according to his good pleasure, doles out to the Queen a yearly allowance of a thousand pounds, puts her in duress in her own house, if her conduct displeases him, and will not allow her to see strangers, except by his permission.  Few will believe that zeal for the honor of the Catholic Church prompted Louis Philippe to inflict so disproportioned a punishment.  That the island is the best victualling-station in the South Pacific is a far greater sin, and one for which there could be in covetous eyes no adequate punishment, except that seizure which is so modestly termed a protectorate.

* * * * *