Free Negroes in Hayti [pp. 526-549]

526 FREE NEGROES IN IIAYTI.
animal-man-is cleared out. The superabundant and useless people are warned
to depart in a certain period. If they neglect the warning, their wigwams are pulled down over their heads, and they are left to the moorland and the hill-sides, to enjoy an equality of shelter with the moor fowl or the sheep. [REVIEWER: Far
worse than the African slave trade! Better sell them, as Oliver Cromwell did
his Scotch prisoners, to the colonies.]
"The Celtic Irish peasant, when he is at home, leads much the same kind of
life, except that he is not quite so closely elbowed as the Highlander is, by the
grouse and the deer. He is not the patient ass that browses upon the thistle,
and takes insults from all comers. Though he, too, lives in a wigwam, and
shares it with a pig; the priest comforts him, when no one else takes the trouble.
When a war breaks out among the nations, this class of men, partly from the
misery of their daily fare and the wretchedness of their daily attire; partly from
the ignorance that accompanies extreme poverty, and partly from a barbarian
love of finery, press, or are pressed into the legions of battle, and die in scarlet
coats and feathered caps, for the supposed good of their country. If war does
not require him, and he has neither energy to emigrate nor friends to supply
him with the means of paying his passage across the Atlantic, he comes over
to England in the harvesting time, and gains a few pounds, to help him to live
through the winter. Some of his good friends, who wish to try experiments at
his expense, settle him on the coast, and lend him a boat, and buy him nets, and
tell him to fish in the sea, and not to allow the Danes and Norwegians to come
down hundreds of miles, and take away the wealth that the great deep affords.
No doubt the man ought to fish, but he does not. The change is disagreeable
to the Celt. lie does not like continuous hard work. A potato diet has weak.
ened his energies. He has no fancy for the sea. He loves the old way. Could
he be allowed to fish in the rivers, he would be willing enough; but fresh water
fish are the property of the landlord, reserved for aristocratic and not plebeian sport and profit. Salt-sea fishing is another matter. There is no landlord
right upon the ocean. The great deep is free. There is no possibility of deriving any rent from its billows: but free as it is, the peasant from the interior
can make no use of it. He not only detests sea-work, but he has no skill in the
managemeut cf boats or nets. Hle has, in fact, no liking for or knowledge of the
business, in any shape or degree....l. Ie prefers to fold his arms in
his potato ground, and trusts in Providence for the better days which never
come to those who do not make them. His children swarm halfnaked about
him, and when the potatoes fail, get a miserable subsistence by gathering
limpets from the rocks, or plucking sea-weed to boil into a jelly."
ART. III.-FRPEE NEGROES IN HAYTI,
"Be assured that no person living, wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a
complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained, and expressed, on
the grade of understanding allotted to them [the negroes], and to find, that in
this respect, thev are on apar with ourselves.....
St. Domitno will, in timne, throw light upon the question."
Correspondence of Thos. Jefferson, 1809, vol. v., pp.. 429, 476.
NE.AR!Y tawo generations of men have passed away since
Jefferson wrote the above words. During that period of half a
century, the civilized world has made a progress in commerce
and the useful arts and sciences, unequalled inl the whole of
any two previous centuries. The application of steam as a
motive power, the introduction of railways, of river and ocean