by Mr. Franklin, and stated to be totally incredible and unprecedented. By loose averments, he seeks to establish a paralysis of the procreative powers of man, and then to infer, as the cause of such waste of animal vigour, habits of idleness and licentious indulgence as the characteristics of Haytian liberty. He then proceeds to argue in favour of the superior efficiency and benefit of the coercion of slavery, over the happier inducements to toil in a state of freedom by the excitement of artificial wants.

But let us examine the correctness of Haytian statistics by comparison. In Kentucky, the inhabitants, black and white, doubled in ten years. In Ohio, they quadrupled. In Missouri, they trebled. And in Indiana, they increased six-fold in the same space of time. These were all free. This rate of " increase not merely renders credible the census of Hayti, but shews it to have been exceedingly surpassed by those very states of America with whose industry and political circumstances Mr. Franklin professes to be minutely conversant, and to which he appeals for the truth of his vague allegations against the veracity of the Haytian Government.

6

But let us see what is the history of the produce and commerce of the Island. Human life, in its best state,' says Bryan Edwards, speaking of colonial St. Domingo, is a combination of happiness and misery; and we are to consider that condi⚫tion of political society as relatively good, in which, notwith'standing many disadvantages, the lower classes are easily supplied with the means of healthy subsistence, and a general air of cheerful contentedness animates all ranks of people ;where we behold opulent towns, plentiful markets, extensive commerce, and increasing cultivation.' Judging of Hayti by this comprehensive rule, and having recourse to the statements of Mr. Franklin as the best authority for our purpose, we trust to present a picture of Haytian commerce and industry not discreditable to the efforts of a people who have had to contend with the waste of a war unexampled in the atrocious policy under which it was conducted.

The writers who for the most part have treated of revolutionized St. Domingo, in recalling the memory of its past splendour and importance as a gem in the diadem of France, have filled the mind with exaggerated pictures of its former general appearance. Hearing of the ravages and devastations. of the revolution, they have fancied cultivated fields in the primeval forests of the country, and created the embellishments of art where all was waste, and wild, and desolate. At the most prosperous period of its history, a population of 665,000 were spread overa territory of superficial extent little inferior

6

to that of England. Even in French St. Domingo, where 540,000 were located, the result of their labours must have been comparatively but as a patch of cultivation in a splendid desert. A country of such magnitude, diversified with plains of vast extent, and mountains of prodigious height, exhibits every species of soil which nature has assigned to the tropical regions of the earth. Fertile in the highest degree, abundantly watered, and producing every variety of vegetable nature for use, for beauty, for food, and luxury, the lavish hand ' of Providence had bestowed upon it the character of richness, and the liberality of nature was laudably seconded by the industry of the inhabitants.'* Such was the brilliant picture of unrevolutionized St. Domingo. But, the valleys shaded by groupes of trees and shrubs on the margin of springs, or by the side of waters collected from the mountain falls,' with all their luxuriance of surrounding herbage, were then, as at this day, abandoned to the wandering cattle; and the culture of the sugar-cane, which engaged the chief attention of the planter, was exclusively found on the plains of the North, the Artibanite and the Cul-de-Sac, where the aid of irrigation secured plenty in seasons of prevailing drought. (pp. 20, 21.)

6

6

The French possessions were divided into three great departments, called the Northern, the Western, and the Southern provinces. The Northern province comprehended a line of sea coast extending about forty leagues from the river Massacre to Cape Nicholas, and contained twenty-six parishes. The Western province began at the Mole, and extending along the line of coast which forms the Bight of Leogane for upwards of 100 leagues, terminated at Cape Tiburon: it contained sixteen parishes and four chief towns. The Southern province, extending upwards of sixty leagues from Cape Tiburon along the Southern coast of the Island to l'Ance-à-pitre, contained twelve parishes and three chief towns. The quantity of land in cultivation throughout all the parishes, was 763,923 carreaux, equal to 2,289,480 English acres; of which about two thirds were situated in the mountains. According to Moreau St. Mery, these were distributed into 793 sugar estates, 789 cotton plantations, 3117 of coffee, 3150 of indigo, 54 cocoa-manufactories, and 623 smaller settlements, on which were produced large quantities of Indian corn, rice, pulse, and almost every description of vegetables required for the consumption of the people. There were also 40,000 horses, 50,000 mules, and 250,000 cattle and sheep. The annual produce of these is

* Bryan Edwards.

estimated in round numbers, at 165,000,000 lbs. of sugar, 68,000,000 lbs. of coffee, 6,000,000 lbs. of cotton, nearly 1,000,000 lbs. of indigo, 29,000 hhds. of molasses, and 300 barriques of tafia or inferior rum. The marketable value of these staples was estimated as equal to about 4,900,000l. sterling, and the amount of imported goods from France, at 3,000,000l. The importations were made in 580 vessels, amounting together to 189,000 tons*. Such was the state of things in the time past. In estimating the present condition, we must advert to the recent history of St. Domingo.

Colonial writers speak of the revolution of Hayti and the horrors of negro rebellion, as if the agitation was first excited by men whom facts declare to have been the last movers in the contest. The summoning of the General Assembly of the colony was attended with the same rapid and decisive effects as that of the States General in France. Important changes and convulsions were the inevitable consequence of sudden innovation. Whether the celebrated decree of the Ten Articles was promulgated by the legislators as a direct project of independence, matters little in the question: it had that tendency, if not its very appearance and design. Receiving its origin in the spirit of liberty which the times generated, and in the conflict of opinions and collision of parties, it necessarily led to the same disorganizing results. The attempt to effect the legislative independence of the colony, terminated in a struggle for mastery between the rival factions of the complexional ARISTOCRACY. Men co-operated in schemes of counter-revolution, ' regarding the evils of anarchy as less tolerable than the dead ' repose of despotism.' A struggle of opposite principles was taking place in politics, whilst complexional prejudices were still cherished by both parties in undiminished force. The people of colour sought for the recognition of their claims in those rights of liberty proclaimed by the revolutionists. The spirit of contention which had destroyed all subordination in the upper classes of colonial society, had excited only an impulse for the honourable distinctions of freedom in the breast of those whose condition in life was a state of contempt and degradation. When we are told that, in countries where

* The island of Jamaica, which is one third the territorial extent of French St. Domingo, has 2,300,000 acres of cultivated land, 300,000 prædial slaves, 300,000 cattle and stock, not including sheep; produces 237,500,000lbs. of sugar, on an average, 20,000,000 lbs. of coffee, 47,000 phns. of rum; and employs 185,000 tons of shipping. The chief city, Kingston, is nearly four times more populous than was Cape François.

slavery is established, the leading principle on which government is supported, is fear; or a sense of that absolu tecoer'cive necessity, which, leaving no choice of action, supersedes all question of right;'-it must surely be a supererogatory labour to prove, that the cruelties of colonial bondage are not falsely represented to be the true source of the Negro revolt of St. Domingo. We find a solution for the sudden excitement of the spirit of liberty, in the injustice which must be characteristic of the system itself. That cultivated plains were converted into a vast field of carnage, who should wonder, when the serpent's teeth were sown, and the harvest reaped was • armed men?'

6

The state of morals in the colony could not be expected to be superior to that in the mother country; and the remembrance of oppressions which accelerated the march of revolution in the one, would naturally sustain the struggle for liberty in the other. Of France, Mr. Hazlitt has not drawn an exaggerated picture when he remarks, in a recent publication, that The law was only a convenient instrument in the hands of the rich against the poor. . . . The great mass of the people were regarded by their superiors as of a lower species, as merely tolerated in existence for their use and convenience: the ob'ject was, to reduce them to the lowest possible state of de'pendence and wretchedness, and to make them sensible of it at every step. The human form only (and scarcely that) was 'left them in other respects, the dogs and horses of the rich were better off, and used with less cruelty and contempt. The arbitrary arrests of the Court were not so frequent as "formerly, but there was no security against them; so that the 'people felt thankful for the forbearance of power, instead of 'being indignant at its exercise. To speak truth, to plead the cause of humanity, was sure to draw down the vengeance ' of Government, and to sign the warrant of your own condemnation.' Such was the picture of the parent state. When the British forces sought to effect the re-establishment of order and of slavery in St. Domingo, they found the privileged orders of the colonial community not less selfish, arrogant, and tenacious of the prerogatives of power*. Surely, then, here were elements, while the contest was confined to the whites exclusively, that would have fomented, in the angry and sullen passions of defeated pride and disappointed interest, the gloomy feelings of hatred and revenge, warring with the same aggravated violence as the phrensied efforts of those who came to the struggle, bleeding from the tortures of slavery, or flushed

*See Bryan Edwards's St. Domingo, chap. x.

with the sensations excited by that oppression under which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.'

The revolutionary history of St. Domingo embraces a political division of three periods: 1st, as we have seen, the conflict of contending factions for a free constitution; commencing with the declarations of the provincial assemblies,-extending through the period of the convocation of a general colonial legislature, by the King's order of January 1790, and terminating with the departure of the colonial deputies for France, in August of the same year. 2d. The war of liberation, excited by the question of political rights, in reference to the free people of colour, and terminating in the full recognition of the liberty of the negroes, after the fruitless attempt at conquest by the British forces, and the repose of the colony under the government of Toussaint L'Ouverture in 1800. 3d. The war of independence, beginning with the arrival of the hostile armaments under Le Clerc, and the arrest of Toussaint L'Ouverture, and ending with the final expulsion of the Europeans, to which the acts that led to the recent recognition of the government of Hayti as free and independent, form a sequel. It is at the termination of the second period, that we resume our history of the commerce and agriculture of Hayti.

After the carnage, the anarchy, and desolation of a servile war had terminated in a full recognition of the freedom of the rebel negroes, a short interval of repose enabled Toussaint L'Ouverture, the enterprising chieftain, to attend to the arts of peace. Here we shall make Mr. Franklin our authority. Toussaint had now been

'left in full possession of the Island, and in the undisturbed enjoyment of the chief command, with which he had been invested some time before by the French Republic. The adherents to the British, except such as had previously left the island under the protection of the English squadron, having joined the national standard, every thing seemed to have the appearance of tranquillity. Peace succeeded the din of arms and the asperities of civil war. . . . . Having completely subjugated the party who had been opposed to him, Toussaint commenced his work of improvement in the whole department of his government. His first care and attention were turned to the culture of the soil, in which, in a short period, he made the most rapid and astonishing progress. Strongly impressed with the conviction, that "agriculture is the main spring, the master sinew of "every great state, the perennial fountain of wealth," he began to enforce a rigid attention to all its branches, and by every possible means to place it in that highly productive condition in which it stood previously to the Revolution. The planters who had joined his standard were reinvested with their estates, but without any property in the slaves..... He issued strict injunctions, that every one not em