486 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
be no easy task to supersede it; and probably till knowledge 
more extensively pervades the country—till the nature and 
laws of evidence are better understood—till the value of 
truth and the sanctity of an oath are more generally felt—in 
short, till more moral and religious principle prevails,—till 
then, trial by ordeal will probably continue. There can be 
no doubt that the dread of detection by it is the one general 
and mighty restraint which checks a thousand deeds of dark¬ 
ness in their very germ, and which else would be fearlessly 
perpetrated. It is thus far a political engine, holding in 
awe a people who, their rulers imagine, can in their existing 
state be held under control only through the medium of 
terror, superstition, and force. Let them be enlightened, 
and such an engine will be no longer required; and when no 
longer required, it w ill no longer be practised. Of this, the 
genius of the Malagasy, if not the very constitution of the 
human mind, and of the system of human affairs at large, 
may be accepted as the pledge. Let the Malagasy learn a 
better and a fairer mode of judgment, and they will write 
“ Obsolete” on their tangena, and their government will 
consign it to contempt and oblivion. 
It is not the design of these suggestions to extenuate the 
enormity, nor to palliate the abominations, of a practice 
already denounced as the direst scourge of a land of many 
calamities; but to assign some reason why an enlightened 
and benevolent monarch did not, and could not, by one act 
of legislative authority, abolish it; and to demonstrate the 
importance of education to the country, were it only to aid 
in the melioration of its civil institutions. The evil depre¬ 
cated is a branch —the axe must be laid to the root . That 
the case demands every consistent and persevering effort, is 
but too painfully obvious, from a moderate computation of 
the great numbers annually falling victims to this system of 
