his license. But
the master evaded this and every other salutary provision; the place and
climate, so distant from the Custom of Paris, where men dishonored only
complexions like their own, lent occasion and immunity. Colonial Nature
was more potent than paper restrictions. In 1750 there were four
thousand freed persons.

But the desire of enfranchising children was so great that the colonists
evaded all the regulations, which multiplied yearly, by taking their
slaves to France, where they became free as soon as their feet pressed
the soil. The only measure which the Government could devise to meet
this evasion was to forbid all men of color to contract marriages in
France.

In 1787 the free persons of color in San Domingo numbered 19,632. In
1790 their numbers were 25,000.

In 1681 the white inhabitants of San Domingo numbered four thousand; but
in 1790, notwithstanding a constant tide of emigration from Europe, they
numbered only thirty thousand.

The number of slaves at the same time was about four hundred thousand, a
number which represents the violent removal of several millions of black
men from Africa: some writers not anti-slavery reckon this tremendous
crime of the white man at ten millions!

What a climate, and what a system, in which only the mulatto thrives!

* * * * *

Thus far we have traced the causes and elements, of Nature, race, and
policy, the passions and peculiarities of many kinds of men, which
culminated at length, in no fair forms of humanity nor beneficent
institutions, but in the foremost sugar-plantation of the world, whose
cane-rows were planted and nourished by the first of crimes, whose juice
was expressed by over-hasty avarice and petulant ambition that could
not be satisfied unless the crime preserved features as colossal as the
passion of the hour.

We are now in a condition to perceive that the Horrors of San Domingo
were those of suicide. Bloody licentiousness lays violent hands upon
its life. Its weaknesses were full of fatal vigor, lust poisoned the
humanity which it inspired, the soil of the buccaneer could raise
nothing which was not exuberant with vengeance. Slave-Insurrection was a
mere accidental episode in the closing scenes of this bad and blundering
career.

* * * * *

A LONDON SUBURB.

One of our English summers looks, in the retrospect, as if it had been
patched with more frequent sunshine than