Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/239

 plans effectual for developing the resources of the country. While the territory was still a neglected waste, and its population poor, the lands of Christophe were in a condition of high productiveness, and the monarch died, leaving millions in the royal treasury.

But the salutary restraints imposed upon his disorderly subjects at the commencement of his reign, had been augmented by degrees to correspond to the demands of an evergrowing jealousy, until they had become changed to a rigorous severity of discipline, or vengeance, such as has been practised in few countries upon the globe. The dungeons of the Citadel Henry were almost as fatal to human life as the Black Hole at Calcutta, and it has been asserted, that amidst the pestiferous exhalations and suffocative atmosphere of these abodes of misery, the prisoners were almost sure to perish after a short confinement. With less truth it has been alleged, that fifty thousand persons lost their lives in these living tombs, while thirty thousand others perished of fatigue, hunger, and hardship of those who had been condemned for offences of a lighter nature, to labors upon the public works of the kingdom, all of which were performed under the lash and bayonet of the soldiery.

These estimates are probably beyond the truth, though the number is incredible of those who perished under the severe exactions of Christophe's tyranny, by hardship, imprisonment, military execution, or the infliction of sudden death, executed amidst a burst of ferocious vengeance in the despot. Christophe failed of giving perpetuity to his government through the mere abuse of his power.