1828.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



191 



blood; walls of adamant; pillars of living ex- 

 istences ; ruined towers ; witches, on steeds 

 of their own manufacture follow in a 

 ceaseless round, till the reader's heart aches 

 with the unvarying gloom, which vague- 

 ness and generalities always create. 



All things must have an end ; and one 

 day Sir Michael, with an approach, the 

 first we discovered, towards attachment 

 for any thing, lifts up his hands, and bids 

 good by to animated nature-" good by, 

 earth and sky ; good by, green fields ; 

 good by, pleasant flowers, fruits, and 

 birds." His companions enter with him 

 into a cave, and are never seen more. 



Present State of Hayti (St. Domingo). 

 By James Franklin ; 1828 It is some 

 time since we read a book, of this class, that 

 has given us more information, more wan ted; 

 in truth, there are few parts of the world of 

 which of late years we have known less than 

 of Hayti ; and the intelligence coming as 

 it now does in a respectable shape, collected 

 by a man who has visited the island com- 

 mercially and officially, and had full oppor- 

 tunities of observing the actual state of it, 

 who has himself a character to preserve, 

 whose respectability is at stake if he prove 

 to have palmed falsehoods on the public- 

 the intelligence so coming, we say, is well 

 calculated to excite curiosity, and we are 

 sure will gratify it. 



The predominant object the point upon 

 which Mr. Franklin is most zealously bent 

 . is evidently to correct and lower down the 

 general but vague impression in favour of 

 negro intellect, and negro civilization to 

 shew that, in the most favourable circum- 

 stances, he actually made small advances 

 that freedom has done nothing for him 

 that, as to physical comfort and intellectual 

 advance, he is actually in a state far inferior 

 to the West Indian slave and that there- 

 fore emancipation is to be held up to Eng- 

 lish philanthropists as a beacon to alarm 

 rather than a precedent to encourage as 

 something to shun, and not to imitate. Not 

 that the author is himself hostile to emanci- 

 pation but that emancipation will do the 

 negro more harm than good, unless he be 

 prepared for it. No doubt this is very near 

 the truth ; but then, most unjustly, every 

 step to preparation is by some considered 

 not, as it ought to be, a step to emancipa- 

 tion, but emancipation itself; and the yells 

 of interest break forth accordingly. 



The manifest bias and purpose of the 

 writer must put us on our guard against too 

 confiding a reliance particularly as to his 

 sentiments and inferences, of which, for a 

 " statement," his book is much too liberal ; 

 and we heartily wish he had confined himself 

 to an exhibition of the actual state of things, 

 without so often and so earnestly recurring 

 to his point which really, considering how 

 much men are biassed by their wishes, leads 

 us to doubt, where otherwise the facts would 

 themselves remove all doubt. As it is, the 



case looks as if the author was interested in 

 the maintenance of slavery, and was only eager 

 to muster arguments in support of his pre- 

 conceived opinions ; he takes not, or at least 

 he has not at all the air of a man who has 

 surveyed the state of things, and been 

 brought by that survey to the conclusion 

 that freedom has done nothing but mischief, 

 but rather of one who is determined to see 

 nothing favourable which contradicts the 

 said conclusion. 



Still, with these impressions, which the 

 perusal of his book has painfully inflicted 

 on us, the actual appeal to facts stript of 

 all argumentation and inference is well 

 calculated to assist us in taking a more ac- 

 curate measure of the true state of things, 

 and to force upon us the conclusion, that 

 the civilization of the negro is not a matter 

 to be accomplished in a day, or in a gene- 

 ration and that hasty emancipation will too 

 probably defeat its own object the im- 

 provement of the negro's condition ; but 

 then we know not what man, or what body 

 of men, entertains any hope so chimerical 

 as the scheme of sudden and unconsidered 

 emancipation the shadow against which 

 the author is battling. 



More than one half of the volume is filled 

 with the history of the island, from the pe- 

 riod of the revolution ; and in stating the 

 source of it, he is anxious to convince the 

 reader that it originated not in the negro, 

 but in the mulatto a fact which no body at 

 all acquainted with the matter ever doubted 

 but the ground of his anxiety is, lest we 

 should hastily conclude, if the negro had 

 sense enough to contemplate liberty, and 

 spirit enough to fight for liberty, he might 

 also have ability enough to make a good use 

 of liberty. No, Mr. F. is happy to affirm 

 the fact is otherwise ; the negro is much too 

 sluggish, too careless, too stupid to stir in 

 his own behalf ; and yet this is said in the 

 teeth of numerous mutinies and rebellions; 

 where negroes of great and decisive powers 

 have had energy enough to rouse up that 

 of their fellows, however unsuccessfully. 



Mr. F.'s main purpose in tracing this 

 history is to shew that the ablest rulers of 

 the negro have always found it necessary to 

 enforce labour at the point of the bayonet. 

 Toussaint, Dessalines, Christophe, all, in 

 succession, well knowing the negro character, 

 did enforce labour. Petion, and his suc- 

 cessor Boyer, both mulattos, who knew less 

 of them, have left them very much to their 

 own ways, and the consequence has inva- 

 riably been deterioration. The native in- 

 dolence of the negro can only be stimulated 

 by force and violence. Wherever this force 

 has been withdrawn, the condition of the 

 negro has sunk. The stimulus of the ordi- 

 nary compensation of labour is no stimulus 

 for him ; he is sensual, and inert, and in- 

 different to accommodations. The labour 

 of a few days in a whole year in a fertile 

 climate, gives what he wants, and he has no 

 regard or concern for more. 



