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APPENDIX. 
justice as will tarnish your glory for ever?’—he would not only 
become calm and reasonable, but, thanking the European for the 
reproof, would often commute death for imprisonment, and perhaps 
even pardon the offender. He had brilliant talents to fight and 
to conquer, but not so much to govern, by promoting the wel¬ 
fare of a conquered people; and amongst his military officers, 
he not only introduced a great deal of useless pomp, but also 
great immorality. Instead of studying to obtain his revenue 
from agriculture, commerce, and industry, or by encouraging 
the introduction of useful trades, he depended upon the spoils 
of war and plunder for the support of his kingdom. He 
never studied so much how to civilise Madagascar, as how to 
conquer it, believing that conquering was the highest glory; for 
French slave-dealers had spoken so much of the glory of Napoleon 
as a warrior and a conqueror, that it became his highest ambition 
to imitate his example. Being exceedingly jealous and suspicious, 
he was afraid to make roads from the interior of his country to 
the sea-coast, to facilitate commerce ; and even dreaded to have 
too many foreign artists and tradesmen in Xmerina, lest they should 
act as spies, to prepare the way for some foreign power to enter, 
and rob him of his kingdom at some future time.” 
Whether Madagascar ever possessed a prince of equal talent 
before him, may be questioned; but none of his predecessors 
possessed so large an extent of territory, nor afforded so much 
encouragement to the civilisation of his country; and though it 
is much to be lamented, that he neither understood Christianity, 
nor valued it for its own sake, he favoured the labours of the 
teachers of that religion for the sake of the civil benefits which 
he anticipated in connection with its introduction to his country. 
The reign of Radama constitutes an epoch in the history of 
Madagascar, too important ever to be lost sight of. Important as 
regards its alliance with Great Britain, the suppression of the 
slave-trade, the adoption of a general system of education, and the 
introduction of Christianity into the very heart of the country; 
while the subjugation of the whole island, the formation of a large 
native army on the European model, the reduction of the language 
to form and order, the establishment of a printing-press at the 
