172 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
The children by different wives are frequently the sub¬ 
jects of secret heart-burnings, or in open variance give vent 
to their malevolent feelings and recriminating animosities. 
Divorces are multiplied, and, with them, envy, hatred, and 
interminable family resentments. Property is also wasted, 
claimants are multiplied, and litigations frequent. In a 
word, polygamy is a curse to the land, and its final extinc¬ 
tion is a consummation most ardently to be desired by 
all who prefer peace to wrath, affection to bitterness, 
domestic comfort to domestic strife, and Christian virtues 
to the jealousy, malice, and uncharitableness of the excited 
and turbulent passions of depraved human nature. 
One great evil consequent on polygamy is the frequency 
of divorce. This may naturally be expected where poly¬ 
gamy is sanctioned and encouraged. The former may 
indeed be permitted under some circumstances where the 
latter is not, as in European countries, but the latter so 
necessarily produces occasions of the former, that it per¬ 
haps could not exist without it. 
The term used for it in the native language is fisaoram- 
bady. The verb misaotra, “ to divorce,” strictly signifies to 
thank or bless, and is used even as an expression of thanks¬ 
giving to the Divine Being. Its use in forming the 
compound word as above, (fisaorana and vady) seems to 
imply a benediction on the wife, thanking her for the past, 
and so gently dismissing her as one whose services are no 
longer required. 
The immediate causes of divorce are numerous, and often 
very trivial. One cause for which a wife is heartlessly 
divorced has been already noticed; besides this, if a wife 
be cruel towards the step-children in a family, or children 
by another wife, or children whom the husband may have 
adopted, or if she be extravagant, or idle, or inattentive to 
