But though the priesthood has laid the people under no tax for a nuptial benediction, there are two operations which it has appropriated, and from which it derives considerable advantages. One is _tattowing_, and the other circumcision, though neither of them have any connection with religion. The tattowing has been described already. Circumcision has been adopted merely from motives of cleanliness; it cannot indeed properly be called circumcision, because the _prepuce_ is not mutilated by a circular wound, but only slit through the upper part to prevent its contracting over the _glans_. As neither of these can be performed by any but a priest, and as to be without either is the greatest disgrace, they may be considered as a claim to surplice fees like our marriages and christenings, which are cheerfully and liberally paid, not according to any settled stipend, but the rank and abilities of the parties or their friends. The Morai, as has already been observed, is at once a burying-ground and a place of worship, and in this particular our churches too much resemble it. The Indian, however, approaches his Morai with a reverence and humility that disgraces the Christian, not because he holds any thing sacred that is there, but because he there worships an invisible divinity, for whom, though he neither hopes for reward, nor fears punishment at his hand, he always expresses the profoundest homage and most humble adoration. I have already given a very particular description both of the Morais and the altars that are placed near them. When an Indian is about to worship at the Morai, or brings his offering to the altar, he always uncovers his body to the waist, and his looks and attitude are such as sufficiently express a corresponding disposition of mind. It did not appear to us that these people are, in any instance, guilty of idolatry; at least they do not worship any thing that is the work of their hands, nor any visible part of the creation. This island, indeed, and the rest that lie near it, have a particular bird, some a heron, and others a king’s-fisher, to which they pay a peculiar regard, and concerning which they have some superstitious notions with respect to good and bad fortune, as we have of the swallow and robin-red-breast, giving them the name of EATUA, and by no means killing or molesting them; yet they never address a petition to them, or approach them with any act of adoration. Though I dare not assert that these people, to whom the art of writing, and consequently the recording of laws, are utterly unknown, live under a regular form of government; yet a subordination is established among them, that greatly resembles the early state of every nation in Europe under the feudal system, which secured liberty in the most licentious excess to a few, and entailed the most abject slavery upon the rest.