Former Principal of Public Schools of Little Rock—Clerk in Railway Mail Service—Grand Scribe of "Mosaic Templars of America"—An Able and Leading Republican of Arkansas.
Every man had something that was regarded as "fanompoana." The people of one district might be required to make mats for the government, in another pots, the article required. From one district certain men were required to bring crayfish to the capital, charcoal from another, iron from another, and so on through all the series of wants. The jeweler must make such articles as the Queen would desire, the tailor use his needle and the writer his pen, as the government might need. The system had in it some show of rough-and-ready justice, and was based on the idea that each must contribute to the needs of the state according to his several abilities; but in the actual working it had a most injurious influence on the wellbeing of the country. Each man tried to avoid the demands made upon him, and the art "how not to do it" was cultivated to a very high degree of perfection. Many of the head men made this "fanompoana" system a means of enriching themselves, compelling the subordinates to serve them as well as the government. History does but repeat itself, as there are not wanting instances in our own country where certain heads of department "fanomponed" subordinates for private service.
In many ways are recorded the product of the fertile brain of these head men. For instance, the centurion, or head man of a certain district, gave out a notice in the church yard, on Sunday morning, or at a week-day market, that a hundred men would be required next morning to carry charcoal for the government. As a matter of fact, he required only twenty, but he knew that many would come to him to beg off, and as none would come empty-handed, his profit on the transaction was considerable. Another illustration was given Mr. Cousins by the British Consul. It was customary to send up mails from the coast by government runners, but English ideas being adverse to demanding unrequited service, the Consul had always sent the usual wages for the runners to the Governor, who pocketed the dollars and "fanomponed" the mail. But enough of this, as it has a flavor of our "Star Route Mail" disclosures, which startled the country some years ago, and conclude with a tribute to Tammany, as:
We arise to remark, and our language is plain,
That the Tweeds and the Crokers are of Malagash fame.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The introduction and perpetuation of the Christian religion in Madagascar has been attended with vicissitudes, hopeful, discouraging, and finally permanent. The Catholics were the first to attempt to gain a footing on the southeast corner of the island. A French mission settled and commenced to instruct the natives in the Roman Catholic faith, and maintained a mission in spite of many discouragements for twenty years, and then came to an end. Protestants who a century and a half later carried the Gospel to Madagascar found it virgin soil. They found a people without a written language or knowledge of the Christian faith. Both in their literary and evangelical labors they had to revive a work that was not dying out, but to start de novo, and the London Missionary Society had to seek its own way to carry out its objects.
The men to whom it appears that the Madagascar people are indebted for their written languages and the first translation of the Scriptures were two Welshmen.