PLANTER AND MERCHANT 43 



of nearly as many more, either through the fighting that 

 preceded their capture on land, or from the terrors of 

 pestilence or shipwreck that awaited them at sea. By 

 1790 the blacks of Santo Domingo outnumbered the 

 whites sixteen to one, and the number of blacks then in 

 the island was estimated at 480,000, in contrast to 30,800 

 whites, and about 24,000 free mulattoes or "people of 

 color." 



Under French rule the blacks had been subjected, 

 as many believed, to a system of slavery unsurpassed 

 for cruelty and barbarity. No doubt there were French- 

 men who, in their fierce struggle to become rich, worked 

 their slaves beyond human endurance and did not hesi- 

 tate to terrorize them with the severest punishment upon 

 the first symptoms of revolt; but, on the whole, such 

 sweeping denunciations were probably unjust. An 

 impartial observer and historian of that day, himself an 

 Englishman, 6 declared that the French treated their 

 slaves quite as well as the English did theirs, and 

 clothed them better. He believed that the lot of the 

 Santo Domingo blacks at the period of which we speak 

 would compare favorably with that of the peasantry of 

 Europe, a comment made familiar to American ears 

 when applied to the slave population of the South. The 

 real trouble came from the more enlightened disaffec- 

 tion of the mulattoes and free negroes, fanned by the 

 fanatic zeal of abolitionists abroad, particularly of those 

 who formed the society of Les Amis des Noirs in 

 France, who were determined to carry out their policies 

 by any means and at whatever cost. 



The mulattoes were really in worse plight than the 

 actual slaves, for they were virtually slaves of the State 



6 Bryan Edwards, Esq., M.P., F.R.S., &c, An Historical Survey of the 

 French Colony in the Island of San Domingo (London, 1797). 



