Page:Emancipation in the West Indies.djvu/11

reduced the French possessions, so that, at the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, they counted but four colonies: Guadaloupe. Guiana, and Martinique in the West Indies, and the Isle of Bourbon, since called Reünion, near Madagascar. In all these were slaves, and though the slave trade was nominally abolished in 1815, it continued, especially in Bourbon, till 1830. The Revolution of July, in that year, gave an impulse to emancipation by raising to power some of those formerly conspicuous as friends of abolition; among them the aged and illustrious Lafayette. This noble enthusiast, as early as 1785, had sent an agent named Richepray to Cayenne, to buy land for the home of emancipated slaves; a generous scheme of the young Marquis, to which Washington, by letter, gave his hearty approval.^[1] But the work begun by Lafayette, and by Louis XVI. was left to be completed by a third generation. From 1831 to 1840, a succession of laws mitigating the condition of the French slaves, and restricting the power of the master, testified to the wishes of the government of Louis Philippe. These laws were advocated by famous men, first among whom the Duke de Broglie deserves to be named. Guizot, Barrot, De Tracy, De Tocqueville, Lamartine, Passy, Montalembert, Remusat, added their reputation and their eloquence to the cause. In 1840, (March 26), the grand commission, to which reference has already been made, was appointed. A majority of its members, among whom was De Tocqueville, were in favor of simultaneous emancipation after a delay of ten years for preparation; the minority wished for gradual emancipation.

A law, carrying out some of these plans, was passed in 1845, warmly supported by Count Gasparin, whose recent book. "The Uprising of a Great People," shows his singular knowledge of our affairs, and his affection for our country. But such was the influence of the handful of slaveholders, and their mercantile partners, in the seaports of France, that they contrived to delay the final act of liberation till after the Revolution of 1818.

Revolutions are not friendly to old abuses. One of the first acts of the Provisional Government (4th of March, 1848) was to appoint a commission to prepare a law of Emancipation.

At the head of this body, Victor Schoelcher was named; an earnest Abolitionist, a brilliant writer, who had twice visited the West Indies, and thoroughly examined their condition. concerning which his books are still the best authority. The Secretary was Wallon, himself an earnest writer on the same and kindred subjects.^[2]

The new law was passed on the 27th of April, 1848, and took effect in May. In the Danish colonies of St. John, St. Thomas, and Santa Cruz, Emancipation was proclaimed by the humane Governor, Van Schelten, in July of the same year. The whole number of slaves for whom indemnity was paid by France, was 248 560. (including 14 000 in the petty colonies of Senegal and Nossi Bé); the whites numbered about 40 000, and the free colored people 100 000. In the Danish islands there were, in 1885.^[3] 27 184 slaves, 8922 free colored persons, and 7 122 whites; in 1848, there were probably about 26 000 slaves. What have been the consequences of freedom in these colonies?

Let it first he said that in the French islands, the slaves were not only set free, but were at once admitted to all the rights of citizens under the new Republic. They were invited to vote at the elections of 1848, and they did so; they were allowed to sit on juries, to bear arms; in short, to assume all the duties of the citizen. The English law, on the contrary, had made every step of the freed slave upward. a slow and costly one. The result showed the greater wisdom of the English method, or, at least, the more fortunate circumstances of its trial.

The year 1848 passed with few troubles; but in the next year there were serious disturbances at Guadaloupe and Martinique, in which the new-made freemen were concerned. Yet the injury done was far less than in the Jamaica revolt of 1882; not a hundredth part so great as that inflicted by Richopanse, in 1802, when, at the command of Napoleon, he restablished slavery in Guadaloupe, at a cost of 20 000 negro lives.^[4] 1848-19, were years of Revolution, and the French islands escaped as lightly as the European States.