What, however, has been the eSect of this alliance on the
natives ? Has it benefited them ? Has it raised them in the
moral scale of society ? Alas ! it has been quite the reverse.
They have had their rations of rum, and have acquired a
love of ardent spirits, and now curse and swear, literally,
as a trooper. They may now be seen haunting the public-
houses, a disgusting and painful proof of their new teaching.
They are many of them thoroughly demoralized. Having
had no Sabbath observance, they have learned to neglect it,
and to believe it is of no consequence. And thus those men,
who have jeopardized their lives in our defence, and been
signally instrumental in preserving our provinces from
destruction, have been ruined in return; and from being
many of them high-principled men, have become besotted.
Sabbath-breaking, worthless characters. Nay, further, the
best way we have found out of shewing our admiration and
good feeling towards them, has been by inviting them to
resuscitate the past customs of barbarous life, to dance their
revolting war dances, which even our colonial ladies attend
with as much apparent gusto as the Spanish dames do their
disgraceful bull-fights.
The question will naturally arise. What is being done for
the good of the native race. The Missionaries are laboring
in their behalf, few in number, most of them far advanced
in years, and fruitlessly (some almost exultingly say), but
do they stand alone in their thankless work of ameliorating
the native race ? I may here relate a circumstance to show
that they nearly do so.
72 THE CHUKCH.
