Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/274

 condition. This dawning of intelligence among the negroes caused no alarm to the planters generally. The French have always been noted for making the kindest slave-owners. Imitating the conduct of many of the old nobility of France in their intercourse with the peasantry, a number of the planters of St. Domingo were attentive to the wants and feelings of their negro dependents — encouraging their sports, taking care of them in sickness, and cherishing them in old age. In the year 1685, likewise, Louis XIV. had published a code noir, or black code, containing a number of regulations for the humane treatment of the negroes in the colonies. Still, there were miseries inseparable from the system, and which could not be mitigated; and in St. Domingo, as in all other colonies of the new world, slavery was maintained by the cruelties of the whip and the branding-iron. X It was only, we may easily suppose, by a judicious blending of kindness and severity, that a population of upwards of 500,000 negroes could be kept in subjection by 40,000 whites.

The condition of the mulatto population deserves particular attention. Although nominally free, and belonging to no individual master, these mulattoes occupied a very degraded social position. Regarded as public property, they were obliged to serve in the colonial militia without any pay. They could hold no public trust or employment, nor fill any of the liberal [sic]professsions — law, medicine, divinity, &c. They were not allowed to sit at table with a white, to occupy the same place at church, to bear the same name, or to be buried in the same spot. Offenses which in a white man were visited with scarcely any punishment, were punished with great severity when committed by a mulatto. There was one circumstance, however, in the condition of the mulattoes, which operated as a balance to all those indignities, and enabled them to become formidable in the colony — they were allowed to acquire and to hold property to any amount. Able, energetic, and rendered doubly intent upon the acquisition of wealth by the power it gave them, many of these mulattoes or people of color became rich, purchased estates, and equaled the whites as planters. Not only so, but, possessing the tastes of Europeans and gentlemen, they used to quit St. Domingo and pay occasional visits to what they as well as the whites regarded as the mother country. It was customary for wealthy mulattoes to send their children to Paris for their education. It ought to be remarked also respecting the mulatto part of the population of St. Domingo, that they kept aloof both from the pure whites and the pure negroes. Such was the state of society in the colony of St. Domingo in the year 1789-90, when the French Revolution broke out.

Although situated at the distance of 3500 miles from the mother country, St. Domingo was not long in responding to the political agitations which broke out in Paris in 1789. When the news reached the colony that the king had summoned the States-general, all the French part of the island was in a ferment. Considering themselves entitled to share in the national commotion, the colonists held meetings, passed resolutions, and elected eighteen deputies to be sent home to sit in the States-general as representatives. The eighteen deputies reached Versailles a considerable time after the States-general had