“My dear Sir,—Apropos of your strictures on usury which have from time to time appeared in ‘Fors,’ I have thought you would be interested in the following extract from a recent work on Madagascar, by the Rev. Dr. Mullens, of the London Missionary Society. “After describing a ‘Kabáry,’—a public assembly addressed by the Queen,—in the Betsileo [85] province, he goes on to say: ‘Having expressed in a clear and distinct voice her pleasure in meeting her people once more, the Queen uttered several sentences usual to these assemblies, in which she dwelt upon the close and affectionate relations subsisting between them and herself. “You are a father and mother to me: having you, I have all.... And if you confide in me, you have a father and a mother in me. Is it not so, O ye under heaven?” To which, with a deep voice, the people reply, “It is so.” Passing at length to the subject specially before her, the Queen said, “My days in the South are now few; therefore I will say a word about the Schools. And I say to you all, here in Betsileo, ... cause your children to attend the Schools. My desire is, that whether high or low, whether sons of the nobles, or sons of the judges, or sons of the officers, or sons of the centurions, your sons and your daughters should attend the Schools and become lovers of wisdom.” The Prime Minister, then, in the Queen’s name, addressed the assembly on the subject of usury,—a great evil among poor nations, and only too common in stages of society like that in Madagascar,—and said, “Thus saith the Queen: All the usury exacted by the Hovas from the Betsileo is remitted, and only the original debt shall remain!’” “I am, dear Sir, faithfully yours, “Joseph Halsey.” II. Useful letter from a friend:— “You say when I agree in your opinions I may come, but surely you do not exact the unquestioning and entire submission of the individual opinion which the most arrogant of churches exacts. [86] With your leading principles, so far as I am yet able to judge of them, I entirely and unreservedly agree. I see daily such warped morality, such crooked ways in the most urgent and important concerns of life, as to convince me that the axe should be laid to the root of the tree. Mainly I am disgusted—no more tolerant word will do—with the prevalent tone of thought in religious matters, and the resulting tortuous courses in daily work and worship. What a worse than Pagan misconception of Him whom they ignorantly worship— “‘Ille opifex rerum, mundi melioris origo’— is shown by the mass of so-called religious persons! How scurrilously the Protestant will rail against Papist intolerance—making his private judgment of Scripture the infallible rule,—