Page:Haiti- Her History and Her Detractors.djvu/343

307 island? Had they inherited from their ancestors centuries of accumulated efforts and instruction? The obvious answer to all these questions must be in the negative. The slaves who by marvels of dauntless courage had succeeded in gaining possession of a country had nothing in common with the Frenchmen; centuries of serfdom had kept them bound to the soil; their brains and higher instincts had been left uncultivated; their only notion of government had come from the whip of the overseer who had subjected them with the utmost cruelty to a severe discipline. Exposed to sufferings and humiliation from their childhood up to the time of their self-emancipation, brutalized by their unscrupulous owners, they could not have the same ideals as their masters. Some of them had succeeded in throwing off the degrading yoke of slavery and in acquiring knowledge. These more enlightened ones led them on to victory, but were unable to teach them from one day to another all they had to learn in matters of self-government. On the ruins of Saint-Domingue, still reeking with the blood of the Frenchmen, another race had risen, the great majority of whom, by reason of the treatment to which they had had to submit throughout all these years, were completely ignorant. This ignorant mass it was which had to be transformed into useful citizens, into a nation. One can appreciate what a delicate and difficult task this was, all the more so as the Haitians were greatly hampered by the continual menace of an aggression from France as well as by the ill will of all the foreign Powers, who at that time were in favor of slavery. For nearly a quarter of a century Haiti had to be on the alert, bent as she was on preserving her independence which no one was willing to recognize. Everything had to be created and organized. It was literally a new people who had come into life. Was it to be expected that in a century this nation could attain its complete and full development? As with other nations, progress must of necessity be slow with this new people. Spenser St. John "e tutti quanti" has overwhelmed Haiti with