The new _régime_ has served as a sort of dark background--although it has been at a terrible cost--to Protestant mission work. The Malagasy themselves said: ‘We were bad, and our forefathers were bad; but they and we too were poor, ignorant, dark-minded fools; but that educated men, professing civilization, should behave as these men do is shameful in the extreme. How different their lives and conduct from that of the other foreigners! But is not the one class Protestant, the other Roman Catholic? In the one case we see the fruits of Bible teaching and religion, and in the other that of Jesuit teaching.’ In the days of Hova supremacy, although the London Missionary Society Mission was in no sense connected with the Malagasy government, and although its missionaries did their utmost to prevent any such connexion--even going the length of informing the prime minister that they would sooner leave the island than consent to his directing the affairs of the churches in any way--still, it enjoyed a certain prestige from the fact that the church of the sovereign and of the leading people of the State was of the same order as those under the charge of its missionaries. Moreover, the congregation known as the Palace Church, which was in close touch with the court, and which very jealously guarded itself from all interference on the part of any European missionary, had a missionary organization of its own, which brought government pressure to bear on the people for the furtherance of Christian work, by means of the so-called Palace Church evangelists who were supported for political purposes.