ion of the mother country, or
to subject them to laws incompatible with their local conditions. They
therefore authorised the inhabitants of each colony to signify their
wishes, and promised that, as long as the plans suggested were
conformable to the mutual interests of the colonies and the metropolis,
they would not cause any innovations.

This of course raised a clamour among the friends of the blacks and
mulattoes, who considered it as sanctioning the slave-trade, which they
wanted to put down. In Hayti the General Assembly met and made some
radical changes, which were opposed by many of the old colonists, and
this brought discord among the whites. The Governor dissolved the
Assembly, but this only brought more trouble, for the subordinate
Western body took the part of the General Assembly, and went so far that
the Governor tried to suppress it by force. But the members put
themselves under the protection of the national guard who resisted the
troops sent against them, and after a short skirmish drove them off.
Thus all authority was put at defiance by the whites, when if they
wanted to keep down the coloured and black people, it was of the
greatest consequence that union should exist. The General Convention
called the colony to arms, but, before actually commencing hostilities,
they resolved to proceed to France, and lay the whole matter before the
Convention. Accordingly to the number of eighty-five they sailed on the
8th of August, 1790, the authorities also agreeing to await the result.

Among the coloured residents in France was a young man named James Oge,
the son of a mulatto woman by a white man, whose mother owned a coffee
plantation. He was a regular attendant at the meetings of the friends of
the blacks, where, under such men as Lafayette and Robespierre, he had
been initiated into the doctrine of the equal rights of men. On hearing
of the vote of non-interference with the colonies, Oge, maddened by the
thought that the civil disabilities of people of his colour would be
continued, resolved to go himself to Hayti. He was confident that the
people there would join him, and going out by way of the United States
he obtained there a good supply of arms, with which he arrived in
October of the same year.

Six weeks after his arrival he wrote to the Governor, demanding that all
the privileges of the whites should be extended to every other person,
without distinction. As representing the coloured people he ma