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306 even exceed the progress accomplished by some of the European States cannot be used as an argument against Haiti. The conditions of the two nations differed so vastly that no comparison is possible. Reflecting upon the conditions in the United States and those of Haiti, considered at the beginning of their independence, the most narrow-minded of men must at once concede that the difference which existed between the two countries takes away all question of comparison between them. When on the 4th of July, 1776, the colonies, in Congress assembled, proclaimed their independence, the men who were about to create the United States of America could be likened to children who were deserting the paternal home in order to found their own homes and families. The first American citizens were, as a matter of fact, Englishmen continuing on their own account the work begun by other Englishmen. The people of this new nation possessed the intellectual culture, the customs, the methods, and all the moral advantages of their former mother country; they had inherited from their ancestors centuries of accumulated efforts and instruction. Atavism had moulded and impressed their intellect. In organizing their government all that was necessary was to adjust it to immediate personal requirements in order to take up the onward progress begun by those from whom they had just parted. Moreover, the Americans were fortunate in that Great Britain accepted the accomplished fact without delay. Lord Cornwallis had hardly handed his sword to Washington (Yorktown, 1781), when George III recognized, in the House of Lords, the full independence of the United States (1782). Consequently, the Americans were able to set to work at once in building up their government without any fear of an aggression from their mother country. What were Haiti's advantages under the same circumstances? At the time of her independence was it Frenchmen who were separating from other Frenchmen? Could the Haitians be considered as the successors of those whom they had just expelled from the