The French are evidently going to have trouble with Madagascar.
The Hovas do not like them at all, and are assailing them through a kind of guerilla war, bands of "brigands" attacking and sometimes defeating parties of Senegalese troops. M. Laroche, the Resident-in.Chief, has been compelled to invoke the authority of the Queen, and is in consequence accused of attending to her representations instead of those of the French settlers, who again allege that the Resident is far too impartial in commercial matters, even occasionally appearing to favour foreign, and especially English, traders. There is no prospect of securing a surplus revenue, and, of course, the expected colonists from home do not put in an appearance. "We want nothing," exclaims one writer, "but capital and colonists," "but we do not get them." There are, too, the usual jealousies and collisions between the civil and military authorities in the island. M. Laroche, therefore, is to be removed ; but it is feared that the garrison must be increased, that more functionaries must be imported, and that the cost of the colony will hardly be less than half- aemillion a year. This is the regular history of French colonies, in Asia as well as Africa, in the Mediterranean as well as the Pacific, and it ensures the ultimate failure of the policy of colonial expansion. The voters are delighted with new colonies, which they regard as affronts to the English ; but they will not send their children to them, and resent being asked for taxes, in the distribution of which they have no share.
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