534 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
also been reduced to slavery, but with the mitigating circum¬ 
stance of permission to be redeemed. The total number 
thus affected is said to amount to nearly one hundred. 
This event occurring about a fortnight after the govern¬ 
ment had received the official report of the embassy to 
Europe, which had been sent to Madagascar when the 
embassy left this country for France, destroyed to a great 
extent the hopes that had been entertained of favourable 
results from their visit to this country, and excited serious 
apprehensions in the minds of many, that no representations, 
even from the highest quarters, would induce the queen 
and her advisers to relax their efforts in behalf of idolatry, 
or to treat with more favourable regard the professors of 
the Christian religion. 
It was feared that on account of the great distance of our 
country from theirs, their unavoidable inability to form any 
just conception of the resources and power of England, or 
to understand and appreciate our principles of action; 
together with a sufficiently high opinion of their own 
importance in the scale of nations—especially their right to 
exercise absolute power over the ill-fated subjects of their 
rule, without being called to account by any foreign nation 
—they would disregard all recommendations that were un¬ 
favourable to their own views. The tidings received during 
the year that has elapsed since the martyrdom of Rafaravavy 
have only tended to strengthen these fears. The Mission¬ 
aries have not been able to visit Madagascar since the sum¬ 
mer of 1837, and in the interval no distinct and authentic 
accounts have been received from the island. 
The message from her majesty the queen-dowager of 
England, to the queen of Madagascar, must have been 
delivered; and the absence of all notice of any beneficial 
result, forces upon us the conclusion that it was not favour- 
