
In long 18th century prose, however, we more typically find the terms “barbarous” and “savage” used to condemn poor behaviour, and this is how Austen uses these words.
In Sense & Sensibility, Marianne thinks a “barbarous” rival has damaged her reputation with Willoughby. Willoughby’s farewell letter to her was “barbarously insolent.” And when she learns her sister Elinor’s secret, she condemns herself. “How barbarous have I been to you!” The term is used light-heartedly in Pride & Prejudice, when the newly-engaged Bingley spends all his time with Jane Bennet “unless when some barbarous neighbour, who could not be enough detested, had given him an invitation to dinner which he thought himself obliged to accept."
Catherine Morland suspects General Tilney of murdering his wife, a “barbarous proceeding.” Henry Tilney refers specifically to the laws, manners and customs of England to criticize the wildness of her suppositions. “Remember that we are English, that we are Christians.”
The most explicit reference to barbarism occurs in Mansfield Park. When Fanny Price learns that her newly-married cousin Maria has run away with Henry Crawford, she is stupefied. She sees it as “too horrible a confusion of guilt, too gross a complication of evil, for human nature, not in a state of utter barbarism.” [emphasis added]

Since no-one was proposing that colonists should vacate the premises forthwith and return the conquered territory to the original inhabitants, it began more and more to appear that the best solution for the problem of the conflict between the Old World and the New was to assimilate, civilize and Christianize the aboriginals.
William Wilberforce, the great abolitionist, also supported the cause of spreading the gospel through India and Africa. Not everyone agreed, but it was a widely popular cause and it went hand-in-hand with the abolition movement.
The abolition movement in the United Kingdom and later in the United States was driven by dissenting Protestants, such as the Quakers. Supporters of abolition could be found among conventional Anglicans, but it was the Evangelicals who made slavery morally indefensible, shifting public opinion in favour of ending the slave trade. I believe Austen was in favour of abolition because she greatly admired the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. I also think she was a traditional Church of England churchwoman. She donated to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which was sponsored by the Church of England. The SPCK's chief focus was providing religious education within the United Kingdom and later, the British Empire. It produced pamphlets to distribute to "farmers, prisoners, soldiers, seamen, servants and slave-owners." |

In defense of missionaries, I'd like to briefly add that from the beginning, missionary work was about more than saving souls. Missionaries built schools and hospitals. My parents served as Methodist missionaries for five years in Korea, after the Korean War. My father taught library science and my mother taught English and took care of war orphans.

Mary Crawford figures in a novel in which, as Miss Prism says, "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily." So are we supposed to share her disdain for dissenters and missionaries?
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