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,® 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 
* Bryan Edwards, Esq., M.P., F.R.S., &c., dn Historical Survey of the 
French Colony in the Island of San Domingo (London, 1797). 
