1830.] [,305 ] 



NOTES ON HAITI FOUR YEARS IN THE WEST INDIES. 



" IT may be safely assumed, on general principles, that a multitude 

 collected at random from various savage nations, and habituated to no 

 subordination but that of domestic slavery, are totally unfit for uniting 

 in the relations of regular government, or being moulded into a system 

 of artificial society." So says Mr. Brougham in his Colonial Policy. So 

 might any one else have said ; for the present condition of society in 

 St. Domingo, after many years of freedom, and the result of all attempts 

 to establish good government and promote free labour amongst Africans, 

 without previous instruction and civilization, fully confirms the assump- 

 tion. 



Had the aggregate of the Africans, carried to St. Domingo and the 

 other slave colonies, been taken, even promiscuously, from the general 

 mass of negro barbarians, less coercion would, in the first instance, have 

 been necessary ; and it would have been less difficult to reclaim them, 

 from savage and brutal habits. But when it is considered that a large 

 proportion of these people were "bad subjects of barbarous states 

 enslaved for their crimes," the difficulty of suddenly training them to 

 the habits of industry and the blessings of civilization must be very 

 evident. Yet in the face of these irrefragable truths, and of facts which 

 ought to have made every man cautious, we every day heard vehement 

 declamations, from foolish theorists, regarding the rapid progress of 

 civilization, and the happy effects of free institutions, in the now miser- 

 able island of Haiti, or St. Domingo ! 



When the Code Rural, and other genuine documents promulgated 

 there, were first made known in this country, their authenticity was 

 impugned, they were declared spurious, and their circulation attributed 

 solely to party motives, by a powerful sect, who obstinately persisted in 

 representing Haiti, not as it actually was at the time, and still remains 

 at the present moment,, but such as, to suit their own distorted views 

 of an important question it ought, in their heated imaginations, to have 

 been. 



At the commencement of the troubles in that unhappy colony, the 

 population was composed of three great classes. The two first, pre- 

 viously irritated against each other, scarcely amounted to one-ninth of 

 the whole. The remaining eight ninths were in a state of the most 

 brutal abasement. 



The best educated part of the community, who were alone capable 

 of undertaking and fulfilling the duties of public functionaries, ceased 

 to exist at the moment of the establishment of independence j and the 

 attempt to form a liberal system of government, where the great mass 

 of the people were totally unable to distinguish between liberty and 

 brutal licentiousness, was evidently chimerical. 



Haiti, therefore, although its institutions are thinly covered by a veil 

 of republicanism, easily seen through by the most casual observer is, 

 and has, since the time of the massacres, been neither more nor less 

 than a military aristocracy of the worst kind ; arid however designing 

 knaves or foolish zealots may reject this view, the sober minded part of 

 the community will feel perfectly satisfied of its accuracy. 



" Nations as well as individuals can acquire maturity only by imper- 



M.M. New Series Vol.. X. No. 57- 2 Q 



