274 
nbw slave laws. 
those who, enjoying great moral consideration among their 
countrymen, and acquainted with the localities. know howto 
vary the means of improvement conformably with the manners, 
habits, and the position of every island. In preparing tlie 
way for the accomplishment of this task, which ou4t to 
embrace a great part of the archipelago of the West Indies, 
1 may be useful to cast a re|j-ospective 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 h^ 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 tS 
enable these human cattle to be more easily recognized. 
Enact laws to obviate the possibility of a barbarous out- 
rage ; hx, m every sugar estate, tlie proportion between the 
least number of-negressos and that of the labouring negroes ; 
grant liberty to every slave who has served fifteen years, to 
roared four or five children ; set them 
fnr fi I * "'poking a certain number of days 
lor the profit of the plantation ; give the slaves a part of the 
net produce, to interest them in the increase of agricultural 
riches ; hx a sum on the budget of the public funds, destined 
for the ransom of slaves, and the amelioration of their 
’eg]sla1dou~^^^'^^ objects for colonial 
promises to 
the veaf 1 ya-i ® ^ ” f ""r happiness of mankind, cLceived, in 
divide it amonV ih! “ 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- 
oFfte n:?; Gh^th" priests of treMrssfon 
oi the Holy Ghost, who themselves possessed lands in French Guiana. 
itnfortunite Lo^XVI June. 1785, provt that the 
untortiinatc Louis XVI., extending his beneficent intentions to the blacks 
an free men of colour, had ordered similar experiments to be made at the 
expense of Government M. de Rieheprey. who was appointeTby M de 
Lafayette to superintend the partition of the lands among the blacL died 
from the effects of the climate at Cayenne. ® ^ 
