The 'History' was completed during the most successful years of the mission. By the late 1820's, scholarship and the press had made catechisms and selections from the Scriptures available to all; and if possession of these did not necessarily imply understanding, it was at least accepted that the laws of Moses were the basis for the articles of Tahitian government. The mission had fallen far from the position of social and political leadership it occupied at the beginning of the 1830's. Equally undesirable from the missionaries' point of view was the attraction of Europeans to Tahiti. To counter the demoralizing influence of Papeete the missionaries during the 1830's shored up the fragile edifice of Tahitian government constructed under Pomare II. The dozen missionaries in the island in 1842 were mindful of their failure and wrote to Du Petit-Thouars signifying their approval of his action.