Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/273

 Fiance and St. Domingo began, and the western part of the island assumed the character of a flourishing French colony, while the Spanish colony in the other end of the island correspondingly declined.

From 1776 to 1789, the French colony was at the height of its prosperity. To use the words of a French historian, every thing had received a prodigious improvement The torrents had been arrested in their course, the marshes drained, the forests cleared; the soil had been enriched with foreign plants; mads had been opened across the asperities of the mountains; safe pathways had been constructed over chasms; bridges had been built over rivers which had formerly been passed with danger by means of ox-skin boats; the winds, the tides, the currents had been studied, so as to secure to ships safe sailing and convenient harborage. Villas of pretty but simple architecture had risen along the borders of the sea, while mansions of greater magnificence embellished the interior. Public buildings, hospitals, acqueducts, fountains, and baths rendered life agreeable and healthy; all the comforts of the old world had been transported into the new. In 1789 the population of the colony was 665,000; and of its staple products, it exported in that year 68,000,000 pounds of coffee, and 163,000,000 pounds of sugar. The French had some reason to be proud of St. Domingo; it was their best colony, and it promised, as they thought, to remain for ages in their possession. Many French families of note had emigrated to the island, and settled in it as planters; and both by means of commerce and the passing to and fro of families, a constant intercourse was maintained between the colony and the mother country.

Circumstances eventually proved that the expectation of keeping permanent possession of St. Domingo was likely to be fallacious. The constitution of society was unsound. In this, as in all the European colonies in the new world, negro slavery prevailed. To supply the demand for labor, an importation of slaves from Africa had been going on for some time at the rate of about 20,000 a year; and thus, at the time at which we are now arrived, there was a black population of between 500,000 and 600,000. These negroes constituted an overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the colony, for the whites did not amount to more than 40,000. But besides the whites and the negroes, there was a third class in the population, arising from the intermixture of the white and negro races. These were the people of color, including persons of all varieties of hue, from the perfect sable of the freed negro, to the most delicate tinge marking remote negro ancestry in a white man. Of these various classes of mulattoes, at the time of which we are now speaking, there were about 30,000 in the colony.

Although perhaps less cruelly treated than others in a state of hopeless servitude, the negroes of St. Domingo were not exempt from the miseries which usually accompany slavery; yet they were not so ignorant as not to know their rights as members of the human family. Receiving occasional instruction in the doctrines of Christianity, and allowed by their masters to enjoy the holidays of the church, they were accustomed to ponder on the principles thus presented to their notice, and these they perceived were at variance with their