OCR Text |
Show 276 LIDEll.TY AND SLAVERY. annals of Jurman crime. "Tho ncgrocB," sa.ys Alison, "marched with spiked infants on their spears instead of colors; they sawed asunder the male prisoners, and violated the females ou the dead bodies of their husbands." The work of death, thus completed with such outbursts of unutterable brutality, constituted and closed tbe first act in the grand drama of IIaytian freedom. But equality was not yet established. The colored men, or mulattoes, beheld, with an eye burning with jealousy, the superior power and ascendency of the blacks. lienee arose the horrors of a civil war. Equality had been proclaimed, and anarchy produced. In this frightful chaos, the ambitious mulattoes, whose insatiable desire of equality had first disturbed the peace of the island, perished miserably beneath the vengeance of the very slaves whom they had themselves roused from subjection and elevated into irresistible power. Thus ended the second act of the horrible drama. This bloody discord, this wild cl1aOs of disgusting brutalities, of course terminated not _.in freedom, but in a military despotism. W1th the subsequent wars and featful destruction of human life our present inquiry has nothing to ARGUMENT FROM TilE rUDLIC OOOD. 277 do. IV c must confine om· attention to tho point before us, namely, the kind of freedom achie.ed by the blacks of St. Domingo. We have witnessed the two great manifestations of that freedom; we shall now look at its closing scene. This we shall, for obvious reasons, present in the language of an English author. "An independent negro state," says he, "was thus established in IIayti; but the people have not derived all the benefits which they sanguinely expected. Released from their compulsory toil, they have not yet learned to subject themselves to the restraints of regular industry. The first absolute rulers made the most extraordinary efforts to overcome the indolence which soon began to display itself. The Code Rural directed that the laborer should fix himself on a certain estate, which he was never afterward to quit without a passport from the government. IIis hours of labor and rest were fixed by statute. The whip, at first permitted, was ultimately prohibited; but fill every military officer was allowed to chastise with a thick cane, and almost every proprietor held a commission, the laborer was not much relieved. By these means Mr. Mackenzie supposes that the produce of 1806 was raised to 2·1 |