Without a question being asked or a doubt suggested, without a voice being raised in fierce denial that such men as these Missionaries were known to be could be guilty of such conduct—men who had jeoparded their lives for years on end rather than hurt one hair on a Native’s head—a cry of execration, loud and deep and even savage, arose from the Press, and was apparently joined in by the Church itself. The common witticism about the “Gospel and Gunpowder” headed hundreds of bitter and scoffing articles in the journals; and, as we afterwards learned, the shocking news had been telegraphed to Britain and America, losing nothing in force by the way, and while filling friends of Missions with dismay, was dished up day after day with every imaginable enhancement of horror for the readers of the secular and infidel Press. As I stepped ashore at Sydney, I found myself probably the best-abused man in all Australia, and the very name of the New Hebrides Mission stinking in the nostrils of the People.
The gage of battle had been thrown and fell at my feet. Without one moment’s delay, I lifted it in the name of my Lord and of my maligned brethren. That evening my reply was in the hands of the editor, denying that such battles ever took place, retailing the actual facts of which I had been myself an eye-witness, and intimating legal prosecution unless the most ample and unequivocal withdrawal and apology were at once published. The Newspaper printed my rejoinder, and made satisfactory amends for having been imposed upon and deceived. I waited upon the Commodore, and appealed for his help in redressing this terrible injury to our Mission. He informed me that he had already called his officers to account, but that all denied any connection with the articles or the pictures. He had little doubt, all the same, that some one on board was the prompter, who gloried in the evil that was being done to the cause of Christ. He offered every possible assistance, by testimony or otherwise, to place all the facts before the Christian public and to vindicate out Missionaries.
The outstanding facts are best presented in the following extract from the official report of the Mission Synod:—
“When the New Hebrides Missionaries were assembled at their annual meeting on Aneityum, H.M.S. _Curaçoa_, Sir Wm. Wiseman, Bart., C.B., arrived in the harbour to investigate many grievances of white men and trading vessels among the Islands. A petition having been previously presented to the Governor in Sydney, as drawn out by the Revs. Messrs. Geddie and Copeland, after the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon on Erromanga, requesting an investigation into the sad event, and the removal of a Sandal-wood trader, a British subject, who had excited the Natives to it,—the Missionaries gave the Commodore a memorandum on the loss of life and property that had been sustained by the Mission on Tanna, Erromanga, and Efatè. He requested the Missionaries to supply him with interpreters, and requested the _Dayspring_ to accompany him with them. The request was at once acceded to. Mr. Paton was appointed to act as interpreter for Tanna, Mr. Gordon for Erromanga, and Mr. Morrison for Efatè.
“At each of these Islands, the Commodore summoned the principal Chiefs near the harbours to appear before him, and explained to them that his visit was to inquire into the complaints British subjects had made against them, and to see if they had any against British subjects; and when he had found out the truth he would punish those who had done the wrong and protect those who had suffered wrong. The Queen did not send him to compel them to become Christians, or to punish them for not becoming Christians. She left them to do as they liked in this matter; but she was very angry at them because they had encouraged her subjects to live amongst them, sold them land and promised to protect them, and afterwards murdered some of them and attempted to murder others, and stolen and destroyed their property; that the inhabitants of these islands were talked of over the whole world for their treachery, cruelty, and murders; and that the Queen would no longer allow them to murder or injure her subjects, who were living peaceably among them either as Missionaries or Traders. She would send a ship of war every year to inquire into their conduct, and if any white man injured any Native they were to tell the captain of the Man-of-war, and the white man would be punished as fast as the black man.”