1829.] Condition of the Wesl-Indian Slave Population. 281 



lished, it would be in the highest degree desirable ; but of the practica- 

 bility of such an abolition there may be much question, under the exist- 

 ing state of things. To persons disposed to investigate this matter with 

 fairness and candour, and with a sincere and honest desire to arrive at 

 the truth, in order that they may apply the most speedy and effectual 

 remedy to an evil which every one possessing human feelings must be 

 most desirous of putting an end to, the state of Hayti offers a useful 

 example. There the existence of slavery was abolished at once ; five 

 and twenty years have elapsed since the freedom (as it is called) of that 

 republic was achieved, in the midst of tumult the most frightful, 

 and excesses the most sanguinary and revolting. The consequences 

 have been, that the population has lamentably decreased, the revenues 

 are in a state of the utmost uncertainty and poverty, the strength 

 of the country is almost annihilated, even for the purposes of defence, 

 religion is little better than a name, and all progi-ess towards the 

 education and moral improvement of the people is at a stand still. 

 We would not be understood to say that such must be the result 

 of emancipation under any circumstances ; but we do insist, that with 

 such an example before their eyes, legislators would do well to 

 carry on the work they have undertaken with caution ; and that, what- 

 ever fanatics may think, and designing persons may assert, there is no 

 safe or certain way of effecting emancipation, but by patient and prudent 

 measures, which shall have been carefully tried by the test of experi- 

 ment. In Hayti it has been said with an appearance of triumph, 

 compulsory labour is unknown. Sir G. Murray observed on a recent 

 occasion in the House of Commons, that unless the power of coercing 

 labour was abolished, it appeared to him that government was acting in 

 a circle, and that when it had done all it proposed to do, it would find 

 itself at the point at which it set out. What will he say to the evidence 

 furnished by the Hayti papers, which have been published since that 

 remark was made ? What will the advoc^es for immediate emanci- 

 pation say when they find that the practical results of their scheme have 

 been the decrease of one-third of the population of the only country 

 in which it has been tried, in a period of five and twenty years, the 

 desolation and irreclaimable poverty of a state which is one of those most 

 favoured by nature, and which was formerly one of the most prosperous 

 on the face of the globe ? The system of military inspection established 

 by Toussaint, which was infinitely more severe than any coercion 

 that had ever before been practised in Hayti, or than has at any 

 period existed in the British colonies, was abolished in 1806. The 

 blessed effects of the law then adopted are obvious. At a much later 

 period the Code Rural, to which the anti-colonists appeal with all the 

 confidence of ignorance, came into operation. Mr. INIackenzie* says of 



* Mr. Mackenzie, the late Consul-Gen eral at Hayti, in a letter to Mr. Canning, dated 

 the .5th of March, 1827, after specifying the decrease in British imports and exports tliere, 

 adds, " the insuperable indolence of the population, the extraordinary facility of acquiring 

 the means of subsistence, render any chance of improvement hopeless ; added to tliis, 

 there is but one staple article of export from Hayti, viz., coffee, the cultivation of wliicli 

 has been so rapidly and enormously extended in otlier parts of the world, as to reduce its 

 value largely. The loss in remittances has been such as to reduce, occasionally, tlie value 

 of the current dollar to three shillings sterling. This diminution of value in the principle of 

 exchangeable ))roduce, lessens the means of purchasing foreign manufactures; and, accord, 

 ingly, in tlie country, the labourers are, generally speaking, nearly naked ; in fact, adults 

 only wearing wliat is barely necessary to prevent indecent exposure, wliile the children of 

 both sexes run about without covering of any kind." — Hayti Papers, jt. 80. 



M.M. AVw .SmVi— Vol. VIII. No. 45. 2 



