Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/189

 *tion of one-third of their toil, while their wants were amply supplied. The mulattoes, or quaterons, children of whites and mulattoes, who were very numerous, if they could show any relationship, whether legitimate or not, with the old white proprietors, were allowed to inherit their property.

Education was not neglected in the midst of these outward and material arrangements. In nearly all the districts, schools were established; and the people, seeing what advantage was to be derived from learning, entered them, and plied themselves vigorously to gain in freedom what they had lost in slavery.

A praiseworthy effort was made by the framers of the constitution, under which Dessalines was inaugurated emperor, to extinguish all distinctions of color among the colored people themselves.

They decreed that the people should be denominated blacks; but such distinctions are far stronger than words on paper. Unfortunately, the distinctions in question, which was deeply rooted, and rested on prejudices and antipathies which will never be erased from human nature, had been aggravated by long and sanguinary contests between the blacks and mulattoes.

Aware of that individual superiority which springs from a share in the influences of civilization, the mulattoes of Hayti despised the uneducated black laborers by whom they were surrounded, and felt that by submitting to their sway, they put themselves under the domination of a majority whose sole authority lay exclusively in their numbers. The mulattoes really believed that their natural position was to fill the places in the government once held by the whites.

They would no doubt have forgotten their party