254 
If France have no other possessions in India—-if 
she determine not to invade Madagascar—and if 
her Asiatic commerce must remain upon the same 
footing as at present, she ought immediately to 
abandon two burdensome isles which are not worth 
the expense of governing, and of the protection they 
demand, only inasmuch as they will serve alternately 
for posts of attack and defence.*” 
Whatever professions the French may have made 
of their love of liberty, they do not seem at this, 
more than any former period, to have had much idea 
of extending the blessings of it to other nations. 
The desire of aggrandisement seems to have super¬ 
seded every principle of justice and humanity. The 
experience of the past too, had thrown but little 
light into their minds; for we here find an accredited 
agent of the French government, coolly talking of 
invading one of the largest islands in the world, 
whose prowess they had had many opportunities of 
feeling, and whose jealousy was never to be over¬ 
reached. Such an attempt, had it been made, would 
have met with no better success than the former ones. 
It is true the reins of government in France, had 
* We have given a literal translation of this curious passage, 
which affords the strongest possible illustration of the truth of 
Benyowsky’s narrative, as it respects the conduct of the 
government at the Isle of France : and it sets the folly of the 
French minister of that period in a striking light, in consigning 
the care of providing for the infant colony at Madagascar, to a 
set of men who had every inducement to prevent its success. 
