18C3.] The Horrors o f San Domingo. 289 Whose God will ye serve, O ye rulers of men ? "Will ye build you new shrines in the slave-breeder’s den ? Or bow with the children of light, as they call On the Judge of the Earth and the Father of All ? Choose wisely, choose quickly, for time moves apace, —■ Each day is an age in the life of our race 1 Lord, lead them in love, ere they hasten in fear From the fast-rising llood that shall girdle the sphere 1 .THE HORRORS OF SAN DOMINGO* CHAPTER V. pany, to which they were obliged to sell their privileges for one hundred and fif­ INTRODUCTION OF SLAVERY— THE ty thousand livres. This great Company SLAVE-TRADE ----AFRICAN TRIBES managed its African business so badly, •— THE CODE NOIR ----TH E M ULAT- that it was withdrawn from their hands TOES. in 1673, and made over as a special in­ terest to a Senegal Company. The trade, It will be necessary for the present in palm-oil, ivory, etc., was principally to omit the story of the settlement and with France, and negro slaves for the growth of the French Colony, and of colonies do not yet appear in numbers the pernicious commercial restrictions to attract attention.* But in 16 79 this which swelled the unhappy heritage of Company engaged with the Crown to the island, in order that we may reach, deliver yearly, for a term of eight in this and a succeeding article, the great years, two thousand negroes, to be dis­ points of interest connected with the tributed among the French Antilles. Negro, his relation to the Colony and This displaced a previous engagement, complicity with its final overthrow. made in 1675, for the delivery of eight The next task essential to our plan hundred negroes. The Company had is to trace the entrance of Negro Sla­ also to furnish as many negroes for the very into the French part of the island, galleys at Marseilles as His Majesty to describe the victims, and the legisla­ should find convenient. And the Crown tion which their case inspired. offered a bounty of thirteen livres per The first French Company which un­ head for every negro, to be paid in dertook a regular trade with the west “ pieces of India.” coast of Africa was an association of This is a famous phrase in the early merchants of Dieppe, without authority annals of the slave-trade. Reckoning or privileges. They settled a little isl­ by “ pieces ” was customary in the and in the Senegal, which was called * Du Tertre, the missionary historian of the St. Louis. This property soon passed Antilles, proudly says, previously to this date into the hands of a more formal associ­ that the Opinion of France in favor of personal ation of Rouen merchants, who carried liberty still shielded a French deck from the on the trade till 1664, the date of the traffic: “ Selon les lois de la France, qui ab- establishment ol the West - India Com- horre la servitude sur toutes les nations du monde, et oil tous les esclaves recouvrent heu- * See Numbers LYI., LVIII., and LIX. of reusement la libertd perdue, sitost qu’ils y this magazine. abordent, et qu’ils en touchent la terre.” VOL. XI. 19 290 The Horrors of San Domingo. [M arch, transaction of business upon the coast ish until it became an Asiento Company, of Africa. Merchandise, provisions, when, during the War of Succession, a and presents to the native princes had Bourbon mounted the throne of Spain. their value thus expressed, as well as It was called Asiento because the Span­ slaves. If the negro merchant asked ish Government let, or farmed by treaty, ten pieces for a slave, the European the privilege of supplying its colonies trader offered his wares divided into with slaves. The two principal articles ten portions, each portion being re­ of this contract, which was to expire in garded as a “ piece,” without counting 1712, related to the number of negroes the parts which made it up. Thus, ten and the rent of the privilege. If the war coarse blankets made one piece, a mus­ continued, the French Company was ket one piece, a keg of powder weigh­ bound to furnish Spain -with thirty-eight ing ten pounds was one, a piece of East- thousand negroes during the ten years India blue calico four pieces, ten cop­ of the contract, but in ease of peace, with per kettles one piece, one piece of forty-eight thousand. Each negro that chintz two pieces, which made the ten the Company could procure was let to it for which the slave was exchangeable: for 33^ piastres, in pieces of India. In and at length he became commercially consequence of this treaty, the ports of known as a “ piece of India.” The Chili and Peru, and those in the South bounty of thirteen livres was computed Sea, from which all other nations were in France upon the wholesale value of excluded, stood open to the French, who the trinkets and notions which were carried into them vast quantities of mer­ used in trade with Africa. chandise besides the slaves, and brought The traffic by pieces is as old as the home great sums in coin and bars. The age of Herodotus ; * it was originally a raw gold and silver alone which they dumb show of goods between two trad­ imported for the year 1709 was reck­ ing parties ignorant of each other’s lan­ oned at thirty millions of livres. guage, but at length it represented a But at the Peace of Utrecht, Louis transaction which the parties should XIV., exhausted by an unprofitable war, have been ashamed to mention. relinquished his asiento to the English, Although this second Senegal Com­ who were eager enough to take it. It pany was protected by the rigid exclu­ was for this advantage that Marlbor­ sion, under pain of tine and confiscation, ough had been really fighting; at least, of all other Frenchmen from the trade, it was the only one of consequence that it soon fell into debt and parted with Blenheim and Malplaquet secured to his its privilege to a third Company, and country. this in turn was restricted by the for­ The reign of Louis XV. commenced in mation of a Guinea Company, so that it 1715. By letters-patent which he issued soon sold out to a fourth Senegal Com­ on the 16th of January, 1716, he granted pany, which passed in 1709 into the permission to all the merchants in his hands of Ilouen merchants who started kingdom to engage in the African trade, a fifth ; and this too was merged in the provided their ships were fitted out on­ West-India Company which was formed ly in the five ports of Rouen, Rochelle, in 1718. So little did the agriculture of Bordeaux, Nantes, and St. Malo ; nine the islands, overstocked with engagis, articles were specially framed to encour­ justify as yet the slave-traders in the age the trade in slaves, as by the Peace losses and expenses which they incur­ of Utrecht all the South-Sea ports were red. closed to the French, and only their The Guinea Company was bound to own colonies remained. France no lon­ import only one thousand yearly into all ger made great sums of money by the the French Antilles; but it did not flour- trade in slaves, but her colonies began * Melpomene, \ 19G. to thrive and demand a new species of 1863.] The Horrors o f San Domingo. 291 labor. The poor white emigrants were preferred. The Cape-Verde, the South- exhausted and demoralized by an ap­ Sea, the Mississippi or Louisiana, and prenticeship which had all the features the San-Domingo Companies tried their of slavery, and by a climate which will fortunes still. But they were all dis­ not readily permit a white man to be­ placed, and free-trade itself was swal­ come naturalized even when he is free. lowed up, by the union of all the French It is the opinion of some French Antilles under the groat West-India anti-slavery writers that the engages Company of 1716. This was hardly might have tilled the soil of Hayti to done before the Government discovered this day, if they had labored for them­ that the supply of negroes was again selves alone. This is doubtful; the white diminishing, partly because so exten­ man can work in almost every region sive a company could not undertake of the Southern States, but he cannot the peculiar risks and expenses of a raise cotton and sugar upon those scorch­ traffic in slaves. So in the matter of ing plains. It is not essential for the negroes alone trade was once more de­ support of an anti-slavery argument to clared free in 1 741, burdened only with suppose that he can. Ivor is it of any a certain tax upon every slave imported. consequence, so far as the question of At this time the cultivation of sugar free-labor is concerned, either to af­ alone in the principal French islands firm or to deny that the white man can consumed all the slaves who could be raise cot ton in Georgia or sugar in Louis­ procured. The cry for laborers was loud iana. The blacks themselves, bred to and exacting, for the French now made the soil and wonted to its products, will as much sugar as the English, and were organize free-labor there, and not a naturally desirous that more negroes white man need stir his pen or his hoe should surrender the sweets of liberty to solve the problem.