Chapter Twenty-seven

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE SOCIAL CONDITION AND GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE TYPEES

I HAVE already mentioned that the influence exerted over the
people of the valley by their chiefs was mild in the extreme; and
as to any general rule or standard of conduct by which the
commonality were governed in their intercourse with each other,
so far as my observation extended, I should be almost tempted to
say, that none existed on the island, except, indeed, the
mysterious 'Taboo' be considered as such. During the time I
lived among the Typees, no one was ever put upon his trial for
any offence against the public. To all appearance there were no
courts of law or equity. There was no municipal police for the
purpose of apprehending vagrants and disorderly characters. In
short, there were no legal provisions whatever for the well-being
and conservation of society, the enlightened end of civilized
legislation. And yet everything went on in the valley with a
harmony and smoothness unparalleled, I will venture to assert, in
the most select, refined, and pious associations of mortals in
Christendom. How are we to explain this enigma? These islanders
were heathens! savages! ay, cannibals! and how came they
without the aid of established law, to exhibit, in so eminent a
degree, that social order which is the greatest blessing and
highest pride of the social state?

It may reasonably be inquired, how were these people governed?
how were their passions controlled in their everyday
transactions? It must have been by an inherent principle of
honesty and charity towards each other. They seemed to be
governed by that sort of tacit common-sense law which, say what
they will of the inborn lawlessness of the human race, has its
precepts graven on every breast. The grand principles of virtue
and honour, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are
the same all the world over: and where these principles are
concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same to
the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind. It is to this
indwelling, this universally diffused perception of what is just
and noble, that the integrity of the Marquesans in their
intercourse with each other, is to be attributed. In the darkest
nights they slept securely, with all their worldly wealth around
them, in houses the doors of which were never fastened. The
disquieting ideas of theft or assassination never disturbed them.

Each islander reposed beneath his own palmetto thatching, or sat
under his own bread-fruit trees, with none to molest or alarm
him. There was not a padlock in the valley, nor anything that
answered the purpose of one: still there was no community of
goods. This long spear, so elegantly carved, and