274 NEW SLAVE LAWS. 



those who, enjoying great moral consideration among their 

 countrymen, and acquainted with the localities, know how to 

 vary the means of improvement conformably with the manners, 

 habits, and the position of every island. In preparing the 

 way for the accomplishment of this task, which ought to 

 embrace a great part of the archipelago of the "West Indies, 

 it may be useful to cast a retrospective glance on the events 

 by which the freedom of a considerable part of the human 

 race was obtained in Europe in the middle ages. In order 

 to ameliorate without commotion, new institutions must be 

 made, as it were, to rise out of those which the barbarism of 

 centuries has consecrated. It will one day seem incredible, 

 that until the year 1826, there existed no law in the Great 

 Antilles to prevent the sale of young infants, and their 

 separation from their parents, or to prohibit the degrading 

 custom of marking the negroes with a hot .iron, merely to 

 enable these human cattle to be more easily recognized. 

 Enact laws to obviate the possibility of a barbarous out- 

 rage ; fix, in every sugar estate, the proportion between the 

 least number of negresses and that of the labouring negroes ; 

 grant liberty to every slave who has served fifteen years, to 

 every negress who has reared four or five children ; set them 

 free on the condition of working a certain number of days 

 for the profit of the plantation ; give the slaves a part of the 

 net produce, to interest them in the increase of agricultural 

 riches ;* fix a sum on the budget of the public funds, destined 

 for the ransom of slaves, and the amelioration of their 

 condition, such are the most urgent objects for colonial 

 legislation. 



* General Lafayette, whose name is linked with all that promises to 

 contribute to the liberty of man and the happiness of mankind, conceived, in 

 the year 1785, the project of purchasing a settlement at Cayenne, and to 

 divide it among the blacks by whom it was cultivated, and in whose favour 

 the proprietor renounced for himself and his descendants, all benefit what- 

 ever. He had interested in this noble enterprise the priests of the Mission 

 of the Holy Ghost, who themselves possessed lands in French Guiana. 

 A lette from Marshal de Castries, dated 6th June, 1785, proves that the 

 unfortunate Louis XVI., extending his beneficent intentions to the blacks 

 and free men of colour, had ordered similar experiments to be made at the 

 expense of Government. M. de Richeprey, who was appointed by M. de 

 Lafayette to superintend the partition of the lands among the blacks, died 

 frour. the effects of the climate at Cayenne. 





