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ACT I-THE ABOLITIONISTS AGITATE AND STIR
UP DISCORD.

The Jacobin abolitionists, in 1791, began the agitation of the slavery question in the Constituent Assembly. This proved to be a firebrand as it has been in our Congress. We quote as follows: [See Allison's Hist. of Europe, vol. i. pp. 120-1.]

"The second catastrophe, more extensive in its operation, yet more terrible in its details, was the revolt of St. Domingo. The slaves in that flourishing colony, agitated by the intelligence which they received of the leveling principles of the Constituent Assembly, had early manifested symptoms of insubordination. The Assembly, divided between the desire of enfranchising so large a body of men, and the evident dangers of such a step, had long hesitated on the course they should adopt, and were inclined to support the rights of the planters. But the passions of the negroes were excited by the efforts of a society styled The Society of Friends of Blacks,' [same as our Abolitionists,] of which BRISSOT was the leading member; and the mullattoes were induced, by their injudicious advice, to organize an insurrection. They trusted that they would be able to control the ferocity of the slaves even during the heats of a revolt; they little knew the dissim ulation and cruelty of the savage character. A universal revolt was planned and organized, without the slightest suspicion on the part of the planters, and the same night fixed on for its breaking out over the whole island.

eing the greatest sugar plantation in the world, the island has been reduced to the necessity of importing that valuable produce; and the inhabitants, naked and voluptuous, are fast receding into the state of nature from which their ancestors were torn, two centuries ago, by the rapacity of Christian avarice.'

ACT II. MORE FREEDOM TO THE NIGGERS DE-
MANDED.

As we have seen what came of the effort to free the negroes from bondage, so let us look at the effect of the Abolition effort to enfranchize the ignorant blacks We quote from the same history, vol. II, p. 241:

By a decree on March 8, 1799, the Constituent Assembly had empowered each colony belonging to the Republic to make known its wishes on the subject of a Constitution, and that these wishes should be expressed by colonial assemblies, freely elected and recognized by their citizens. This privilege excited the most ruinous divisions among the inhabitants of European descent, already sufficiently menaced by the ideas fermenting in the negro population. The whites claimed the exclusive right of voting for the election of members of this important assembly, while the mulattoes strenuously asserted their title to an equal share in the representation; and the blacks, intoxicated with the novel doctrines so keenly discussed by all classes of society, secretly formed the project of ridding themselves of both. This decree of the National Assembly was brought out to the island by Lieutenant Colonel OGE, a mulatto officer in the service of France, who openly proclaimed the opinion of the parent Legislature, that the half-caste and free negroes were entitled to their full share in the election of the representatives. The jealousy of the planters was immediately excited. They refused to acknowledge the decree of the Assembly,constituted themselves into a sepa rate Legislature, and having seized OGE in the Spanish territory, put him to death by the torture of the wheel, uncircumstances of atrocious cruelty.

"At length, at midnight, on the 30th October, the insurrection broke forth. In an instant twelve hundred coffee and two hundred sugar plantations were in flames; the buildings, the machinery, the farm offices, reduced to ashes; the unfortunate proprietors hunted down, murdered or thrown into the flames by the infuriated negroes.The horrors of a servile war universally appeared. The unchained African signalized his ingenuity by the discov ery of new aud unheard-of modes of torture. An unhap-der py planter was sawed asunder between two boards; the horrors inflicted on the women exceeded anything known even in the annals of Christian ferocity. The indulgent master young and old, rich and poor, the wrongs of an oppressed race were indiscriminately wreaked. Crowds of slaves traversed the country with the heads of the white children affixed on their pikes; they served as the standards of these furious assemblages. [Our abolitionists have endeavored to incite similar outrages in the South.] In a few instances only, the humanity of the negro character resisted the savage contagion of the time; and some faithful slaves, at the hazard of their own lives, fed in caves their masters or their children, whom they had rescued from destruction.

"The intelligence of these disasters excited an angry discussion in the Assembly. Brissot, the most vehement opponent of slavery, ascribed them all to the refusal of the blessings of freedom to the negroes; [precisely as our abolitionists ascribe every evil-the war and all-to slavery; the moderate members, to the inflammatory addresses circulated among them by the Anti-Slavery Society of Paris; [precisely as our abolitionists have ever done, and are now doing.] At length it was agreed to concede the political rights for which they contended to the men of color; and, in consequence of that resolution, St. Domingo obtained the nominal blessings of freedom. ["At length" came Lincoln's proclamation-a perfect historical parallel.] But it is not thus that the great changes of nature are conducted; a child does not acquire the strength of manhood in an hour, or a tree the consistency of the hardy denizens of the forest in a season. The hasty phi lanthropists who conferred upon an ignorant slave population the precipitate gift of freedom, did them a greater injury than their worst euemies. And our "hasty philanthropists," who clamor for immediate abolition, will do the slaves here "more harm than their worst enemies."] The black population remain to this day, in St. Domingo, a memorable example of the ruinous effect of precipitate emancipation. Without the steady habits of civilized society; ignorant of the wants which reconcile to a life of labor; destitute of the support which to a regular government might have afforded, they have brought to the duties of cultivation the habits of savage life. To the indolence of the negro character they have joined the vices of European corruption; profligate, idle, and disorderly, they have declined both in numbers and in happiness; from

"This unpardonable proceeding, as is usually the case with such acts of barbarity, aggravated instead of stifling the prevailing discontents, and the heats of the colony soon became so vehement that the Constituent Assembly felt the necessity of taking some steps to allay the ferment. The moderate and violent parties in that body took different sides, and all Europe looked on with anxiety upon a debate so novel in its kind, and fraught with such momentous consequences to a large portion of the human race. Barnave Malouet, Alexander Lameth, and Clermont Tonnerre strongly argued that men long accustomed to servitude could not receive the perilous gift of liberty with safety either to themselves or others, but by slow degrees, and that the effect of suddenly admitting that bright light upon a benighted population would be to throw them into inevitable and fatal convulsions. But Mirabeau, the masterspirit of the Assembly, and the only one of its leaders who combined popular principles with a just appreciation of the danger of pushing them to excess, was no more, and the declamations of Brissot and the Girondists prevailed over these statesman-like ideas. By a decree on the 15th

of May, 1791, the privileges of equality were conferred indiscriminately on all persons of color, born of a free father and mother,

"Far from appreciating the hourly increasing dangers of their situation, and endeavoring to form with the new citizens an organized body to check the further progress of leveling principles, the planters openly endeavored to resist this rash decree. Civil war was preparing in this once peaceful and beautiful colony; arms were collecting; the soldiers, caressed and seduced by both parties, were wavering between their old feelings of regal allegiance and the modern influence of intoxicating principles, when a new and terrible enemy arose, who speedily extinguished in blood the discord of his oppressors. On the night of the 22d of August, the negro revolt, long and secretiy organized, at once broke forth, and wrapped the whole Northern part of the colony in flames. JEAN FRANCOIS, R slave of vast, penetrative, firm character, and violent passions, not unmingled with generosity, was the leader of the conspiracy; his lieutenants were BIASSON and TOUSSAINT. The former, of gigantic stature, Herculean strength and indomitable ferocity, was well fitted to assert that superiority which such qualities seldom fail to command in savage times; the latter, gifted with rare intelligence, profound dissimulation, boundless ambition,

and heroic firmness, was fitted to become at once the Numa and the Romulus of the sable Republic in the Southern Hemisphere.

"This vast conspiracy, productive in the end of calamities unparalleled even in the long catalogue of European atrocity, had for its objects the total extirpation of the whites, and the establishment of an independent black government over the whole island."

[Beware of liberty to the blacks, and, "extirpation" of the whites ]

We quote as follows from the same Act, though in a different scene, p. 243-3 (1801):

"Meanwhile the legislative assembly, which had succeded the constituent, a step farther advanced in revolutionary violence, were preparing ulterior measures of the most frantic character. Irritated at the colonial legislature for not having followed out their intention, and instigated at the populace, whom the efforts of Brissot and the Society at Paris, des Amis des Sorris had roused to a perfect phrensy on the subject, they revoked the decree on the 24th of September preceding, which had conferred such ample powers on the colonial legislature, dissolved the assembly at Cape Town, and dispatched three new commissioners, Arthanx, Santionax, and Polverel, with unlimited powers to settle the affairs of the colony. In vain Barnaves and the remnant of the constitutional party in the assembly strove to moderate these extravagant proceedings; the violence of the Jacobins bore down all opposition. Don't talk to us of danger,' said Brissot; 'let the colonies perish rather than one principle be abandoned.' [Don't talk to us, say our Abolition Brissots-let the Union perish rather than abandon our platform.]

The proceedings of the new commissioners speedily brought matters to a crisis. They arrived first at Port an Prince, and in conformity with the secret instructions of the government, which were to dislodge the whites from that stronghold, they sent off to France the soldiers of the regiment of Artois, established a Jacobin club, transported to France or America thirty of the leading planters, and issed a proclamation [aye, aye, a "proclamation"] in which they exhorted the colonists "to lay aside at last the prejudices of color." Having thus laid the revolutionary train at Port au Prince, they embarked for Cape Town, where they arrived in the middle of June. Matters had

by this time reached such a height there as indicated the immediate approach of a crisis. The intelligence of the executive of the King, and proclamation of a Republic, had roused to the very highest pitch the Democratic passions of all the inferior classes. The planters, with too good reason, apprehended that the convention which had succeeded the legislative assembly would soon outstrip them in violence and put the finishing stroke to their manifold calamities, by at once proclaiming the liberty of the slaves, and so destroying the remnant of property which they still possessed. But their destruction was nearer at hand than they supposed. On the 20th of June a quarrel accidentally arose between a French naval captain and a mulatto officer in the service of the collonial government; the commissioners ordered them both into their presence, without regard to the distinction of color, and this excited the highest indignation in the officers of the marine, who landed with their crews to take vengeance for the indignity done to one of their members. The colonists loudly applauded their conduct, and invoked their aid as the savior of St. Domingo; the exiles brought from Port au Prince fomented the discord as the only means of effecting their liberation; a civil war speedily ensued in the blockaded capital, and for two days blood flowed in torents in these insane contests, between the sailors of the fleet and the mulatto population.

"The negro chiefs, secretly informed of all these disorders, resolved to profit by the opportunity of finally destroying the whites thus afforded to them. Three thousand insurgents penetrated through the works stripped of their defenders during the general tumult, and making straight for the prisons, delivered a large body of slaves who were there in chains. Instantly the liberated captives spread themselves over the town, set it on fire in every quarter, and massacred the unhappy whites when seeking to escape from the conflagration. A scene of matchless horror ensued: twenty thousand negroes broke into the city, and, with the torch in one hand and the sword in the other spread slaughter and devastation around. Hardly had the strife of the Europeans with each other subsided, when they found themselves overwhelmed by the venge

ance which had been accumulating for centuries in the African breast. Neither age nor sex were spared; the young were cut down in striving to defend their houses, the aged in the churches where they had fled to implore protection; virgins were immolated on the altar; weeping infants hurled into the fires. Amid the shrieks of the sufferers and the shouts of the victor, the finest city in the West In. dies was reduced to ashes; its splendid churches, its stately palaces, were wrapped in flames; thirty thousand human beings perished in the massacre, and the wretched fugitives who had escaped from this scene of horror on board the ships, were guided in their passage over the deep by the prodigious light which arose from their burning habitations. They almost all took refuge in the United States, where they were received with the most generous hospitality; but the frigate La Fine foundered on the passage, and five hundred of the survivors from the flames perished in the waves.

"Thus fell the Queen of the Antilles: the most stately monument of European opulence that had yet arisen in the New World. Nothing deterred, however, by this unparalleled calamity, the commissioners of the Republic pursued their frantic career, and, amid the smoking ruins of the Capital, published a decree, which proclaimed the freedom of all the blacks [what could more perfectly represent this case than the President's proclamation, while the rebel armies were thundering at our capital?] who should enroll themselves under the standards of the Republic; a measure which was equivalent to the instant abolition of slavery over the whole island. Farther resistance was now hopeless; the Republican authorisies became the most ardent persecutors of the planters; pursued alike by Jacobin phrensy and African vengeance, they fled in despair. Polveral proclaimed the liberty of the blacks in the West, and Montbrun gave free vent to his hatred of the

colonists, by compelling them to leave Port au Prince, which had not yet fallen into the hands of the negroes. Everywhere the triumph of the slaves was complete, and the authority of the planters forever destroyed.

"But, aithiough the liberation of the negroes was affect. ed, the independence of the island was not established."

ACT III.NAPOLEON ISSUES AN ABOLITION

PROCLAMATION.

In 1801, NAPOLEON, urged on by the Abolitionists, issued his proclamation abolishing slavery in the Island of St. Domingo, in which he called on the "brave blacks to remember that France alone had recognized their freedom," and on November 22, 1801, having appointed LE CLERC, his brother-in-law, to the command of the army about to visit St. Domingo in order to reduce the recusant TOUSSAINT to obedience, he issued the following "proclamation" [See p. 245]:

At St. Domingo, systematic acts have disturbed the po litical horizon. Under equivocal appearances, the government has wished to see only the ignorance which confounds names and things, which usurps when it seeks to obey; but a fleet and an army, which are preparing in the harbours of Europe, will soon dissipate these clouds, and St. Domingo will be reduced, in whole, to the government of the Republic." In the proclamation addressed to the blacks, it was announced by the same authority, "Whatever may be your origin or your colour, you are Frenchmen, and all alike free and equal before God and the Republic. At St. Domingo and Guadaloupe slavery no longger exists-all are free-all shall remain free. At Martinique different principles must be observed."

Now here seems on almost exact identity between NAPOLEON's and Old ABE's proclamations, especially the liberating the slaves in some localities and not in others.

ACT IV.

Here we have the tragedy, with our parallel close on its heels.

To show from British abolition sources what

This last act in this abolition tragedy now remains for us to perform. The other acts we have scrupulously imitated, and it only remains The trafor us to finish up the "afterpiece."

stage, playing to crowded houses.

a great curse abolition has been to the French and negroes, we quote from p. 251, as follows: "Since the expulsion of the French from the island, St. Domingo has been nominally independent; but slavery has been far indeed from being abolished, and the condi-gedians, prompters, supes and all are on the tion of the people anything but ameliorated by the change. Nominally free, the blacks have remained really enslaved. Compelled to labor, by the terrors of military discipline, for a small part of the produce of the soil, they have retained the severity, without the advantages of servitude; the industrious habits, the flourishing aspect of the island have disappeared; the surplus wealth, the agricultural opulence of the fields, have ceased; from being the greatest exporting island in the West Indies, it has ceased to raise any sugar; and the inhabitants, reduced to half their Republican task masters, have relapsed into the indolence and inactivity of savage life.

"The revolution of St. Domingo has demonstrated that the negroes can occasionally exert all the vigor and heroism which distinguish the European character: but there is, as yet, no reason to suppose that they are capable of the continued efforts, the sustained and persevering toil, requisite to erect the fabric of civilized freedom. An observation of Gibbon seems decisive on this subject: The inaction of the negroes does not seem to be the effect either of their virtue or of their pusillanimity. They indulge, like the rest of mankind, their passions and appetites, and the adjacent tribes are engaged in frequent acts of hostility. But this rude ignorance has never invented any effectual weapons of defense or destruction; they appear incapable of forming any extensive plans of government or conquest, and the obvious inferiority of their mental faculties has been discovered and abused by the nations of the temperate zone. Sixty thousand blacks are annually embarked from the coast of Guinea but they embark in chains, never to return to their native country; and this constant emigration, which, in the space of two centuries, might have furnished armies to overrun the globe, accuses the guilt of Europe and the weakness of Africa.'

"If the negroes are not inferior, either in vigor, courage, or intelligence to the European, how has it happened that for six thousand years, they have remained in the savage state? What has prevented mighty empires arising on the banks of the Niger, the Quarra, or the Congo, in the same way as on those of the Euphrates, the Ganges, and the Nile? Heat of climate, intricacy of forests, extent of desert, will not solve the difficulty, for they exist to as great an extent in the plains of Mesopotamia or Hindostan as in Central Africa. It is vain to say the Europeans have retained the Africans in that degraded condition, by their violence, injustice and the slave trade.

"How has it happened that the inhabitants of that vast and fruitful region have not risen to the government of the globe, and inflicted on the savages of Europe the evils now set forth as the cause of their depression? Did not all nations start alike in the career of infant improvement? and was not Egypt, the cradle of civilization, nearer the Central Africa than the shores of Britain?

In the earli

est representations of nations in existence the paintings on the walls of the tombs of the Kings of Egypt, the distinct races of the Asiatics, the Jews, the Hottentots, aud Europeans are clearly marked; but the blue-eyed and white-haired sons of Japhet are represented in cowskins, with the hair turned outward, in the pristine state of pas toral life, while the Hottentots are already clothed in the garb of civilized existence. What since has given so mighty an impulse to European civilization, and detained in a stationary or declining state the immediate neighbors of Egyptian and Carthagenian greatness? It is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion but that, in the qualities requsite to create and perpetuate civilization, the African is decidedly inferior to the European race; and if any doubt could exist on this subject, it would be removed by the subsequent history and present state of the Haytian Republic."-See Mackenzie's St, Domingo, vol. ii, 260, 321. The following table contains the comparative wealth, produce, and trade of St. Domingo, before 1789, and in 1832, after forty years of nominal freedom.

ST. DOMINGO.

1789. .600,000

Sugar exported............672, 0000,000 lbs.

Population.......

Coffee....

Ships employed in trade........

Sailors

Exports to France.........

..86,789,000 lbs.

.1,680 .27,000

£9,720,000

Imports from ditto......9,890,000

1832. 280,000 None. 32,000,000 lbs

1 167 None. None.

CHAPTER II.

EFFECTS AND INCIDENTS OF AGITATION IN THE WEST INDIES.

Agitation of the Slavery Question in England... Abolition of the Slave Trade... English Philanthropists Define their Position against immediate Emancipation... Abolition of Slavery in the British West Indies: Effects of such Emancipation... Testimony of Anti-Slavery men...Decline of Commerce... Destruction of Agriculture... The Negroes Tending to Heathenism... Valuable Statistics respecting Hayti...Indolence and Destitution of the Negroes... Present Condition of Hayti... Abolition Testimony... The Results of Emancipation in Jamaica... Census and Statistics... Great Falling Off in Products... Estates Going to Decay...The Negro Receding into a Savage State....The Public Debt Increasing....The "London Times" Owns Up... Dr. CHANNING'S Prophecy not Fulfilled... TROLLOP and the "London Times"....Negroes will not render Voluntary Labor... Testimony of numerous Abolitionists, showing the Effects of Emancipation in the West Indies... Effect in Mexico... Mr. LINCOLN'S Opinion...Statistics Applicable to the Question in the West Indies and the United States...General Conclusions, etc.

SLAVERY AGITATION IN ENGLAND.

In England, for more than two centuries, the question of abolition was agitated, CANNING, CLARKSON, WILBERFORCE, BURKE and other humanitarians devoted their lives to the subject, and the world has given them credit for unambitious and human impulses, and while these philanthropists scorned to make political merchandise of their prejudices against slavery, their agitation of the subject, as in Rome and France, brought to the surface a horde of demagogues, cheap philanthropists and political agitators, who of course jostled from the stage an equal number of Statesmen. These agitators are indigious to all civilized countries, and are ever ready to mount the most popular hobby on which to ride into place and power, and herein we have a melancholy parallel in this country.

In 1798 Mr PITT introduced his bill in the House of Commons for the abolition of the slave trade, which finally became a law, and that inhuman traffic was no longer patronized But the system of slavery by the British flag. introduced under the aegis of that flag int America and in the British West Indies, had so fastened its fangs on the body politic, and so interwoven itself among all relations of life, that to attempt its sudden extirpation was considered by the wisest and best philanthropists of the day as an evil even greater than the system itself. PALEY, the great emancipationist. after a long agitation exclaimed, "The truth is, emancipation should be gradual, or the consequences may be terrible."

CANNING, the great English emancipation

ist, in his speech on the subject in Parliament, March 6th, 1824, said:

If I am asked whether I am for the permanent existance of slavery in our colonies, I say no; but if I am asked whether I am favorable to its immediate abolition, I say no; and if I am asked which I would prefer, permanent slavery or immediate abolition, I do not know whether under all the perplexing circumstances of the case. I should not prefer things remaining as they are.-Canning's Select Speeches, p. 414.

Here, we see the well grounded fears of a real philanthropist, who looked to remote consequences rather than to immediate political advantage.

she withholden from them? What production of any zone would be unattainable by patient industry, if they knew of such a virtue? But this valley seems to be encircled with the greatest fertility and the finest climate in the world, only to show the miraculous power of idleness and unthrift to keep land poor! Here, the family have sometimes omitted their dinner because there was nothing to eat in the house! Maize, cocoa and rice. when out of season, can hardly be had for love or money; so this valley (Cauca) a very Eden by nature, is filed with hunger and poverty !" A distinguished writer, commenting on the above, says:

"Now, there are over 2,000,000 of square miles essentially in the same position, degraded in morals, lazy in habits, and worthless in every respect. The improvements under the Spaniards are gone to decay and ruin, while the mongrel population do nothing, except insult the name of "God and Liberty" by indulging in pronunciamentos and revolutions."

When God had made all things save man, He found there was no one to till the ground," so he made Adam. Thus, it seems that the Divine object in creating man was to "till the land"-to labor and earn his sustenance "by the sweat of his brow," and that people who will not labor, defy the purposes of God, and his curses must follow, as we shall see.

It was not until 1833, thirty-five years after Pitt introduced his measure for the abolition of the slave trade, that England abolished slavery in her eighteen West Indian colonies, at a cost of $100,000,000, and it should be remembered that the home Government had no slaves, and hence nothing to fear, except to the pockets of her West Indian merchants, nor had she any constitutional barriers in the way But, although slavery has been abolished in the British West Indies for over thirty years, and the system of free labor and African freedom thoroughly tested, there is no historical dissent from the well known fact that both master and slave, in every material fact pertaining to their commercial prosperity, their phys-true ical, moral and religious condition, are immeasurably below the standard of their former condition. Let a few statistical and historical facts settle this point.

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The West India Islands contain about 150,000 square miles of the richest territory on the globe, and a climate that no latitude or longitude surpasses. A distinguished traveller says:

"It is extremely difficult to convey to one unacquainted with the richness and variety of the island scenery of the tropics, a correct impression of its gorgeous scenery.— Islands rising from a crystal sea, clothed with a vegetation of surpassing luxuriance and splendor, and of ev ery variety, from the tall and graceful palm, the stately and spreading mahogony, to the bright flowers that seem to have stolen their tints from the glowing sun above them. Birds, with colors as varied and gorgeous as the hues of the rainbow, flit amid the dark green foliage of the forests, and flamingoes, with their scarlet plumage, flash along the shore. Fish, of the same varied hues, glide through waters so clear that for fathoms below the surface they can be distinctly seen. Turn the eye where it will, on sea or land, some bright color flashes before it. Nature is here a queen indeed, and dressed for a gala day."

To this gorgeous picture may be added the fact that all the lucious fruits of the tropics, oranges, lemons, citrons, mangoes, coffee, plantains, bananas, yams, maize, millet, pine apples, melons, grapes, &c., grow spontaneously. Such a paradise—such a garden of Eden— ought to secure wealth, prosperity and happiness to even the least deserving effort. A light 'draft' on Prof. HOLTON's work on New Greneda* will pay:

"What more could nature do for this people, or what has *NEW GRENADA: Twenty Months in the Andes. By Isaac F. Holton, M. A. Harper & Bros.

The result of French and British philanthropy has been emancipation from labor, and degradation. Misery and want is the result of that emancipation, because it is historically that the Ethiopean will not labor unless compelled by the thrift of his Caucasian or Castilian superiors, and herein lies the secret of retrogression, pauperism and crime, under the fatal mistake of philanthropists that all men should be equal by human laws, when God by His laws peremptorily forbids it.

In 1800 there was imported from the West Indies cotton to the amount of 17,000,000 lbs., and from the United States 19,789,803 lbs. Thus, in 1800 they were about equally productive in that fabric. In 1840, under their freedom of from 10 to 45 years, the West Indies exported only 866, 157 lbs. of cotton, while the United States exported 743,941,061 lbs. Garrison, Thompson, and other British agitators, had predicted that the West Indies, under the new system of freedom would outstrip the slavery accursed United States. But the above facts do not show it in this light.

THE HAYTIEN FREE REPUBLIC.

Hayti is divided into two grand divisions, the Western portion being the Haytien, or negro colony, and the Eastern the Dominican Republic. It is first in size to Cuba, is the most luxuriant and fertile of the Antilles, and contains 27,690 square miles, of which 17,599 are comprised in the Dominican Republic.The entire length of the Island is 406 miles by 163 broad. The population is estimated at from 550,000 to 650,000. The climate and natual resources surpass any other locality on this planet. Gold, silver, platina, sulphur, copper, tin, iron, rock salt, jasper, marble &c. &c, exist in abundance, and under the old system the mines and quarries were made to yield abundance of wealth, but these have long since ceased to be worked, as has the soil, and every department requiring labor.

the export of all metals, they would long ago been sold to

In 1790 Hayti was in the heyday of its pros- | in his work just published, entitled The West perity. "At that time," says a distinguished Indies-their Moral and Social Condition. Mr. writer, it supplied half of Europe with sugar. U. was sent out by the Baptist Missionary SoIt was a French colony and contained a popu- ciety of London, and is an Abolitionist of unlation of 500,000, of which 38,360 were whites doubted orthodoxy. In his description of his and 28,370 free negroes, mostly mulattos, the journey to Port au Prince, he says: rest were slaves." This was the error of the great French revolution, when BRISSOT was agitating the abolition of slavery in the French colonies, on the basis of "liberty, equality and fraternity." In 1793 the freedom of Hayti was decreed, and the "grand experiment" was entered upon. Let us put in juxtaposition a few statistics that exhibit the result of this humane course. In 1790, three years before emancipation, the exports from Hayti were $27,828,000. The following being the principal productions that entered into the exporting manifests. We compare them below for three periods, ranging from 1790 to 1849, the latest dates which furnish any reliable statisics:

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Here is the result of three periods, the first three years before emancipation, the second thirty-three years after, and the third fifty-six years after. It will be seen that the article of coffee is the only article that has kept up to even an approximation to the original standard, the reason is, though flourishing under good cultivation, yields moderately well under spontaneous growth, and can be procured without agricultural labor, while sugar, indigo, and cotton cannot. Here is a striking evidence of the worthless indolence of the negro when left to himself. The above statistics are taken from the United States Commercial Relations, vol. 1, pp. 561-2, officially reported to Congress and published by its order.

"In collonial times, when the soil was cultivated by forced labor, this same country (Hayti) produced for export five or six times the amounts now exported."--Ap. pleton's New American Cyclopedia.

"The public revenue is derived chiefly from customs, navigation dues, monopolies, &c, and averages about $1,000, 000 a year, The expenditures exceed this amount, and hence the public debt has been constantly increasing."Ibid.

But we are not left wholly to statistics. A foreign resident at the Haytien capital writes:

"This country has made, since its emancipation, no progress whatever. The population principally live upon the produce of the grown wild coffee plantations; remnants of the French dominion. Properly speaking.plantations of the model of the English in Jamaica, or the Spanish in Cuba, do not exist here. Hayti is the most fertile and the most beautiful of the Antilles, it has more mountains than Cuba, and more space than Jamaica. No where the coffee tree coud better thrive than here, as it especially likes a mountainous soil, but the indolence of the negro has brought the once splendid plantation: 15 decay. They now gather coffee from the grown wild tie. The cultivation of the sugar cane has entirely disappeared, and the Island that once supplied the one half of Europe with sugar now supplies its own wants from Jamaica and the United States."

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF HAYTI.

The present condition of Hayti is more graphically depicted by Mr. E. B. UNDERHILL

"We passed by many, or through many abandoned plan-
tations, the buildings in ruins, the sugar mills decayed,
and the iron pans strewing the road side, cracked and bro-
en. But for the law that forbids, on pain of confiscation,
foreign merchants. Only once in this long ride did we
come upon a mill in use. It was grinding canes, in order
to manufacture the syrup from which tafia is made, a kind
The mill was worked by a large overshot or water wheel,
of inferior rum, the intoxicating drink of the country.
the water being brought by an aqueduct from a very con-
siderable distance. With the exception of a few banana

gardens, or smal. patches of maize around the cottages,
of cultivation.

nowhere did this magnificent and fertile plain show signs

"In the time of the French occupation, before the Revo

lution of 1798, thousands of hogsheads of sugar were pro-
duced, now not one! A is decay and desolation! The
pastures are deserted, and the prickly pear covers the land
once laughing with the bright hues of the sugar cane.

"The hydraulic works erected at vast expense, for irriga-
tion, have crumbled to dust. The plow is an unknown im-
plement of culture, although so eminently adapted to the
great plains and deep soil of Hayti.
"A country so capable of producing for export, and
therefore for the enrichment of its people, besides coffee,
sugar, cotton, tobacco, cacao, spices-every tropical fruit,
cultivated and desolate! Its rich mines are neither ex-
and many of the fruits of Europe, lies unoccupated, un-
plored nor worked, and its beautiful woods rot in the soil
where they grow. A little logwood is exported, but ebo-
ny, mahogony and the finest building timber, rarely fall
The present inhabitants despise all servile labor, and are
before the woodman's axe, and then only for local use.
for the most part content with the spontaneous productions
of the soil and forest."

NIGROES RELAPSING INTO BARBARISM.

As showing the tendency of the negro to relapse into the barbarism of his African progenitors, we copy Mr. UNDERHILL's description of what is known as the Vaudoux religion or serpent worship:

"It is a native African superstition, and proves beyond all question the rapid return of the Hayti negroes to the original savageism of their African ancestors.

Mr. UNDERHILL gives a full description of this disgusting, heathenish rite, from which we select the chorus. The object of which is a small green snake, to worship which the negro naturally has a predisposition, but is repressed by control of the whites. Of late it has been revived in Hayti, and we give the chorus of the heathenish exercises:

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Mr. Underhill further describes this heathenish rite:

"The Vaudoux meet in a retired spot, designated at a primary meeting. On entering, they take off their shoes, and bind about their bodies handkerchiefs, in which a red color predominates. The king is known by the scarlet band around his head, worn like a crown, and a scarf of the same color distinguishes the queen. The object of adoration, the serpent, is placed on a stand.It is then worshipped; after which the box is placed on the ground, the queen mounts upon it, is seized with violent tremblings, and gives utterances to oracles, in re

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