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form than that which they approved, their fears for the 
souls of the Madegasses were instantly excited, and with it 
the old superannuated zeal for the prevention of heresy. 
But as it was in the beginning with Popery, so it is now, 
and ever will be, as long as it exists. Bigotry and into¬ 
lerance are its characteristic marks, and it either has not 
the power, or it takes no pains, to conceal them. 
We sincerely rejoice that their proposal met with so 
prompt and decided a refusal: not because we have any 
fear that they could have made an impression on the 
minds of the Madegasses unfavourable to the British, but 
because the present moral state of the island is such that 
they might have caused that kind of religious perplexity in 
them, which would have been very unfavourable to the 
dissemination of Christianity. In order to promote such 
an object amongst any people just emerging from a state of 
barbarism, it is necessary for the instructors to confine 
themselves to the plainest and most fundamental truths, 
and those which are capable of the simplest illustration 
any other course would, we conceive, fail in its object, and 
leave them in a worse state of uncertainty than before 
such things were presented to them. 
We are fully persuaded in our own minds, that it was on 
this ground alone they met with a refusal, and not from 
the existence of an intolerant spirit on the part of the 
king. In fact, such a spirit is unknown in Madagascar, if 
the information of all the travellers who have written on 
the subject may be depended on; and we are certain that 
it will not be the object of the missionaries, at present on 
the island, to infuse it into the minds of that simple people. 
The receipt of this letter led to an inquiry on the part of 
the king, respecting the difference between the Protestant 
* In Flacourt’s work, are the prayers and confessions to the Virgin 
Mary, St. Michael, John Baptist, &c. &c. with the commands of the church 
to abstain from flesh on Fridays and Saturdays, and, in short, the whole 
routine of popish worship and discipline, translated into Madegasse l 
