On the 14th, we were brought into new difficulties and inconvenience by another robbery at the fort. In the middle of the night, one of the natives contrived to steal an iron coal-rake, that was made use of for the oven. It happened to be set up against the inside of the wall, so that the top of the handle was visible from without; and we were informed that the thief, who had been seen lurking there in the evening, came secretly about three o’clock in the morning, and, watching his opportunity when the sentinel’s back was turned, very dexterously laid hold of it with a long crooked stick, and drew it over the wall. I thought it of some consequence, if possible, to put an end to these practices at once, by doing something that should make it the common interest of the natives themselves to prevent them. I had given strict orders that they should not be fired upon, even when detected in these attempts, for which I had many reasons: the common sentinels were by no means fit to be intrusted with a power of life and death, to be exerted whenever they should think fit, and I had already experienced that they were ready to take away the lives that were in their power upon the slightest occasion; neither, indeed, did I think that the thefts which these people committed against us were, in them, crimes worthy of death: that thieves are hanged in England, I thought no reason why they should be shot in Otaheite; because, with respect to the natives, it would have been an execution by a law _ex post facto_. They had no such law among themselves, and it did not appear to me that we had any right to make such a law for them. That they should abstain from theft, or be punished with death, was not one of the conditions under which they claimed the advantages of civil society, as it is among us; and as I was not willing to expose them to fire-arms, loaded with shot, neither could I perfectly approve of firing only with powder. At first, indeed, the noise and the smoke would alarm them, but when they found that no mischief followed, they would be led to despise the weapons themselves, and proceed to insults, which would make it necessary to put them to the test, and from which they would be deterred by the very sight of a gun, if it was never used but with effect. At this time an accident furnished me with what I thought a happy expedient. It happened that above twenty of their sailing canoes were just come in with a supply of fish: upon these I immediately seized, and bringing them into the river behind the fort, gave public notice, that except the rake, and all the rest of the things which from time to time had been stolen, were returned, the canoes should be burnt. This menace I ventured to publish, though I had no design to put it into execution, making no doubt but that it was well known in whose possession the stolen goods were, and that as restitution was thus made a common cause, they would all of them in a short time be brought back.