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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: their hire. Stanislao's opinion of a decay of virtue even in these
unvirtuous islands has been supported to me by others; his very
example, the progress of dissolution amongst the young, is adduced
by Mr. Bishop in Hawaii. And so far as Marquesans are concerned,
we might have hazarded a guess of some decline in manners. I do
not think that any race could ever have prospered or multiplied
with such as now obtain; I am sure they would have been never at
the pains to count paternal kinship. It is not possible to give
details; suffice it that their manners appear to be imitated from
the dreams of ignorant and vicious children, and their debauches
persevered in until energy, reason, and almost life itself are in
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