§ SIR ELLIS ASHMEAD-BARTLETTI beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether his attention has been called to the letters by Mr. Bennett Burleigh from 1060 Madagascar, published in the Daily Telegraph, and especially to those dated 25th February and 16th April, and published on 16th May and 4th June; whether there are a considerable number of English traders and missionaries with their families in the interior of the island, and exposed to dangers from the Senegalese and Turco auxiliaries that form part of the invading army; whether Her Majesty's Government will send a man-of-war to Malagasy waters to give protection to British subjects and British interests; whether the French authorities at Tamatave seize and detain all British correspondence and newspapers; and whether M. Sauzier, the acting British Consul at Tamative, will be permitted to refuse to forward private correspondence?
§ *SIR E. GREYThe English traders and missionaries who elect to remain in the island are, from the nature of the case, exposed to the ordinary risks inseparable from military operations, but there is no reason to believe in special danger from the French forces. We have no information that British correspondence has been seized and detained. In the case of one mail the commander of a French cruiser demanded that the contents should be handed over to him, but it is not understood that he detained them. Mr. Sauzier cannot, while hostilities continue, receive and forward private correspondence.