Note O — SECTION V.

The history of the Revolution in St Domingo is not generally understood in this country. The result of the instantaneous emancipation of the slaves, in that island, by an act of the Conventional Assembly of France in the month of February, 1794, settles the controversy between the immediatists and gradualists. 'After this public act of emancipation,' says Colonel Malenfant, who was resident in the island at the time, 'the negroes remained quiet both in the South and in the West, and they continued to work upon all the plantations.' 'Upon those estates which were abandoned, they continued their labors, where there were any, even inferior agents, to guide them; and on those estates, where no white men were left to direct them, they betook themselves to the planting of provisions; but upon all the plantations where the whites resided, the blacks continued to labor as quietly as before.' 'On the Plantation Gourad, consisting of more than four hundred and fifty laborers, not a single negro refused to work; and yet this plantation was thought to be under the worst discipline and the slaves the most idle of any in the plain.' General Lacroix, who published his 'Memoirs for a History of St Domingo,' at Paris, in 1819, uses these remarkable words: 'The colony marched, as by enchantment, towards its ancient splendor; cultivation prospered; every day produced perceptible proofs of its progress. The city of the Cape and the plantations of the North rose up again visibly to the eye.' General Vincent, who was a general of a brigade of artillery in St Domingo, and a proprietor of estates in that island, at the same period, declared to the Directory of France, that 'every thing was going on well in St Domingo. The proprietors were in peaceable possession of their estates; cultivation was making rapid progress; the blacks were industrious, and beyond example happy.' So much for the horrible concomitants of a general emancipation! So much for the predicted indolence of the liberated slaves! Let confusion of face cover all abolition alarmists in view of these historical facts! This peaceful and prosperous state of affairs continued from 1794, to the invasion of the island by Leclerc in 1802. The attempt of Bonaparte to reduce the island to its original servitude was the sole cause of that sanguinary conflict which ended in the total extirpation of the French from its soil.—[Vide Clarkson's 'Thoughts on the Necessity of Improving the Condition of the Slaves in the British Colonies,' &c.]